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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
“The millions of people being uprooted by climate change do not benefit from the ‘stubborn optimism’ of environmental elites. Instead, they will be better served by the stubborn realism of the experts and activists now brave enough to call for urgent degrowth in rich countries and fair adaptation everywhere.” – Dr Stella Nyambura Mbau
“The seemingly simple act of listening to the environment often leads to unexpected complexities of thoughts, sensations and emotions that are not quantifiable or measurable. When we listen… we simultaneously take in the current conditions of the acoustic environment and those of our innermost sound world, our thoughts and emotions. [This] is both highly personal and at the same time universal. It is here where the real journey of listening starts.” — Hildegard Westercamp
“I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness ... The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.” ― Nelson Mandela
“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
