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“If war has an opposite, gardens might sometimes be it, and people have found a particular kind of peace in forests, meadows, parks and gardens.” — Rebecca Solnit
During the slow winter months we gladly leave behind, we have been quietly busy preparing the ground for our new Rights Studio Garden. Now it’s time to reconnect.
Beyond just another metaphor, gardens hold so much symbolism: they offer us a way of understanding our work, our role, and our vision while also developing our ecological awareness.
As we wrote before, they are also a symbol of our inner life; an ideal we aspire to. As a physical space, a garden is a place we can get lost in, where we can slow down, contemplate, reflect, think, but it is also a place that requires care, patience, and hard work.
So we raked the soil, we cleaned, and weeded, we planted some seeds and now are ready to invite you to take a walk with us in our new garden — our digital space to make art and human rights grow, aka, our website.
As you wander, you will see that this is a work in progress and things will begin to bloom and mushroom in the weeks to come. We hope it better reflects who we are and what we do. May it be a place that entices you to contribute, or simply contemplate and be quietly curious. We hope you enjoy the view and the walk we start together.
Words, Veronica Yates
illustration, Miriam Sugranyes
Orwell’s Roses, Rebecca Solnit
The Overstory, Richard Powers
Wintering, The power of rest and retreat in difficult times, Katherine May
“What do you do when the highway’s famished? When it eats people? When soldiers are walking on the streets beating people up, what do you do? Where do you go when going forward is no longer possible? I think you steal through cracks. I think you do what fugitives do. I think you do what the slaves on slave ships did when they were dominated by colonial powers. You learn to fall down and sit still and await the crossroads. You learn to listen. You learn to compost yourself.” — Bayo Akomolafe
“It’s not always easy to be comfortable in the space created by open questions. It’s tempting to hide in small rooms built from quick answers.”― Merlin Sheldrake
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move the opposite direction.”— E. F. Schumacher
