Braziers Park Educational Events

About the event:
We will spend a weekend drawing in from the land, preparing harvests of the summer season into healing medicines for the cold times. Learn about specific herbal techniques including tincture making, syrups, elixirs, vinegars and electuaries, specific for the respiratory, circulatory and immune systems as the energy shifts.
Meet the plants of the autumn that support our health at this time, and gather knowledge about how to bring them into your daily life for greater winter wellbeing.

About the facilitator:
Rasheeqa Ahmad (Hedge Herbs) is a medical herbalist in her community in Walthamstow in north London. She has been practicing since 2012, offering treatment with herbal medicine and teaching about its many aspects, alongside a wider mix of work whose aim is reconnecting us as communities with the potential of this knowledge and craft as a way to support healthier living systems and relationships. She is inspired by her early involvement with the Radical Herbalism Gathering in exploring how to make plant medicine accessible and restore balance to its practice in the contexts of systemic inequalities and oppressions that are part of our shared histories.

Rasheeqa is part of Community Apothecary Waltham Forest in her locality, a social enterprise that brings community members together around a patchwork of medicinal herb gardens where they can learn about growing and making medicines together, exchanging knowledge and peer support and seeding the model in other neighbourhoods so that we create landscapes of healing everywhere.

About this event:
Come and join us for a three-hour painting session with artist Wendy Botto. This is going to be a relaxed session of artistic self-expression through acrylic painting on canvas. Open to all artists or beginners. All materials will be provided.
It should be a fun, lively day painting the front facade of the beautiful Braziers building. Everyone can paint, so everyone is invited. Wedny will simply help those that aren’t so confident to be bold. At the end of the session you will all have your very own interpretation of the building to take home.
The session will include three hours of painting, conversation, and will be followed by a delicious lunch.

About this event:
During this workshop, participants will have an opportunity to explore different plant fibres from the Braziers Park landscape, working with them to create coiled bowls and baskets. Participants will get to know a wide range of different crop residues, as well as to glean their own materials from our beautiful Walled Garden. Over the course of the day, we will use coiled basketry techniques to work these materials into different vessels. Participants will be encouraged to pick, snap, split, scrape, and prod plants, getting to know them and their weaving affordances. The emphasis will not be on having a perfected piece to take home. Instead, the focus will be on taking home skills and inspiration, creating space for experimentation, risks, and new understandings. This is the second of two Living Fibres workshops. It can be attended as a stand-alone workshop or as the second of the two-part series.

About the facilitator:
Fred Branson’s work combines experience in community arts, visual anthropology & agroecology. He is particularly interested in producing work that engages with both the materials and politics of different landscapes. His most recent work responds to the plants he encounters as part of his work on a small-scale vegetable farm in North Oxfordshire. This has led to experiments with cordage, coiled basketry, and most recently – thanks to funding from Arts Council England – the construction of camera obscura.

About the event:

During this course, Heather will lead you step-by-step through the basics of spinning wool using a Basque drop spindle. First, you will be shown how to card your wool so it is ready for spinning, and then you will be guided how to draft and spin the wool to make colourful yarn. Heather will be on hand to answer any of your questions. You will also have the opportunity to try your hand at a spinning wheel and/or weave using a traditional loom (time permitting).

There will be plenty of wool on hand for you to mix and match, but if you have some wool you would like to try out, feel free to bring it along.

About the facilitator:

As a Braziers Park resident, Heather has been spinning wool intensively for the last two and a half years. She enjoys the process of spinning and wishes to pass on her enthusiasm to others. As well as spinning, Heather is a keen wildlife enthusiast and monitors the wildlife at Braziers Park.

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