Land for Who

Land for Who

Resistance: Despite striking imbalance of power, people are resisting. E.g, GRT communities (Dale Farm?), River Roding Trust taking up space on land then seeking planning permission retrospectively, stewarding the land while proving social benefit, POC-led food justice movements (LION), practicing ancestral traditions which centre spiritual relationships of ‘working with’ land, rather than ‘extracting from,’ #KillTheBill protests and coalition

This graphic contains some key reflections from a collaborative process that has been about unearthing and exploring diverse views on how change in the land system might happen.

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In order to build a fairer, more just land system where everyone has the connection with land that they want and need we need to...

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Land is connected to everything. But we are not all connected to the land or each other. We are disconnected from the land physically, practically, financially and spiritually.

Structural inequality (along lines of race, class, gender, disability, immigration status, health and other forms of marginalisation and their intersections) impacts who owns, has access, manages, makes decisions and gets to have a positive relationship with land. Legislation, policy and funding decisions benefit those with land.

Information about how land is owned, managed and exploited is not transparent. There is a significant lack of accountability.

Too often land that is available is of poor environmental quality - who has access to healthy land and who doesn’t is an issue of power

Our movements are often fractured, silo’d (focussing on one aspect of the system like food or housing), competing for resources, missing information, and lacking in trust.

This is part of the design of the dominant system - the heavy concrete of “the way things are” makes it hard to even imagine alternatives. Extraction and exploitation are often the basis for relationships between people, and with nature, and prop up the artificial separation between the two.

There’s so much going on beneath the surface; so much energy and potential in the ground.

Despite striking imbalance of power, people are resisting, and embedding logics of care and stewardship into their relationship with the land around them. There are wonderful examples of where communities have burst through that concrete, but they are few and far between.

These include occupying space on land then seeking planning permission retrospectively, stewarding the land while proving social benefit, practising ancestral traditions which centre spiritual relationships of ‘working with’ land, rather than ‘extracting from,’ and taking ownership of buildings to provide sanctuary and meet need, not generate profit.

...recognise it’s a long process; change moves at the pace of trust

...aerate the soil with ideas, resources, information and facts

...connect people up - be like mycelium supporting the grass (and tree, and flower) roots

...tell new stories about what is possible

...crack open the dominant narrative

This visualisation was created by Stéphanie Heckman www.stephanieheckman.com

Land for Who was facilitated by Frances Northrop and Emmet Kiberd at NEF, Kim Graham and Kate Swade at Shared Assets, in collaboration with Deborah Broomfield, Grace Brown and Sara Chitseko