Every Saturday · Bethnal Green Nature Reserve

Community Ecologies is a year-round series of community-led, co-learning workshops happening every Saturday throughout 2025.

Set in our urban nature reserve and neighbouring food gardens, these workshops are a space for grassroots knowledge-sharing, creativity, and hands-on experimentation.

This year’s theme explores the connection between ecological and social health in the context of climate change — sparking conversation, action, and creative responses from the community.

All events are free
📍 Meet at the entrance gate, Middleton Street, E2 9RR
🕒 Start time: 3pm · Duration: ~1 hour

Upcoming Workshops

The Colours of Herbs — Odhran
📅 Sat 6 Sep · 3–4pm
Experience the colours of medicinal herbs through a sensory plant walk, tea tasting, and creative mapping.

Forage & Preserve: Wild Food Skills for Urban Ecology — Magdalena
📅 Sat 20 Sep · 3–4pm
Learn to identify, harvest, and preserve wild urban plants with practical skills like pickling and fermenting.

Embodied Drawing Workshop — Kirsty
📅 Sat 4 Oct · 3–4pm
Explore nature’s cycles and the beauty of decay through intuitive, playful drawing.

Collective Cartographies — Leela
📅 Sat 18 Oct · 3–4pm
Create a collaborative map of the reserve, weaving together memories and climate-aware visions.

Butoh Movement Workshop — Elspeth
📅 Sat 1 Nov · 3–4pm
Connect body and environment through Butoh-inspired movement, blending imagination, fluidity, and ecological awareness.

Unravelling the Patterns of Nature — Anand & Eden
📅 Sat 15 Nov · 3–4pm
Discover nature’s hidden rhythms through sound, pattern, and creative making.

Wild Food Walk — Than
📅 Sat 29 Nov · 3–4pm
Join a guided walk to explore the edible and medicinal uses of wild plants in the reserve.

Recent Workshops

Creative Plant Naming — Yaya
📅 21 Jun · 3–4pm
A sensory workshop using tea tasting, smell, and drawing to connect with plants and reimagine how we name them.

Providing Solitary Bees with Bed and Board — Eamonn Postlethwaite
📅 12 Jul · 3–4pm
Discover the bees of Bethnal Green, learn to identify species, and help build a new bee habitat in the reserve.

Singing with the Birds — Catherine Clover
📅 26 Jul · 3–4pm
Learn to mimic the bird songs heard around the reserve in this fun, no-experience-needed vocal workshop.