“We need to cultivate within ourselves and within our communities the capacity to take time, slow down, and give our mind a break.” zoë laureen palmer


E185 – zoë laureen palmer on Beekeeping, Collective Care and Cultural Intuition

Pollinating Our Imagination


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About this interview:

How do we create moments of collective care and sanctuary in troubled times?
 
 
“We need to cultivate within ourselves and within our communities, the capacity to really take time, and to really slow down and to really give our mind a break.” zoë laureen palmer
 
In this episode, Amisha talks with zoë laureen palmer, a multidisciplinary artist, co-creator and human ecologist working at the intersection of the arts, health and ecology. Her regenerative practice explores our relationship with the more than human world centering embodied ecologies, underrepresented narratives and knowledge through a de-colonial lens. She is a gentle beekeeper and a plant medicine student cultivating an afro-futurist apothecary in response to climate breakdown.
 
In this intimate conversation, Amisha and zoë laureen unearth a flow of big questions arising from living in troubled times of system collapse and climate crisis. Together they ground us in ideas and practices that can help us nourish and flourish whilst being present to the complexities unfolding around us.
 
They explore 
:: beekeeping as practice of collective and community care; a teacher of reciprocity, interbeingness and storytelling :: collective dissociation and creating sanctuary reclaiming shattered lives and places
:: our relationship with slowing down and decolonising time as an act of collective care
:: interspecies grief and finding ways of flourishing in a world that’s diminishing
:: how we can rekindle our intimacy with each other and the natural world, and how to open this conversation up to to the wider living world
 
“Beekeeping has become a practice for me;  collective care, multi species care, storytelling and learning that’s based on reciprocity and actually not on extraction.” ~zoë laureen palmer
 

 

zoë laureen palmer is an multidisciplinary artist, co-creator and human ecologist working at the intersection of the arts, health and ecology. her regenerative practise explores our relationship with the more than human world, centering embodied ecologies, underrepresented narratives and knowledges through a de-colonial lens.

In 2021 as part of Season For Change she co-created the dreaming field lab, a crucible, carnival, sanctuary, imaginarium and radical rest retreat celebrating women of colour in the British Landscape. Recent collaborations include work on Black Earth Resistance with Tiata Fahodzi + Wild Cards for Glimpse Collective, Seeding The Commons for the Gaia Foundation + Custom Food Lab + panel curation for the Blue Earth Summit. her award-winning work spans live performance, installation, text + participatory events and has been programmed across the UK + internationally at venues including Den Jyske Opera, The Royal Opera House, Carnegie Hall + The National Theatre of Mannheim.

zoë is currently exploring collective dreaming methodologies, radical kindship, care, un-knowing and creating ordinary rituals and portals for dangerous times asking: how can we create possibilities for intimacy without proximity to the natural world? how can we entangle ourselves in each others lives through everyday acts of collective care? how can we collectively disrupt capitalist narratives of human dominance and de-center ourselves allowing the world to breathe + dream through us?

A gentle beekeeper for 15 years and 4th year student at the plant medicine school, she’s currently cultivating an Afrofuturist apothecary, a part real part speculative British African herb garden in response to climate breakdown.

Zoe was a speaker in the Rise Up series that I hosted for Change Festival that was curated by Becky Burchell, who you can hear in episode 150 and find links to the videos of the talks.

 

To connect or work with zoë laureen, visit zoelaureenpalmer.com

To connect or work with Amisha, visit amisha.co.uk


artwork video: Julia Noni

 

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