Supported by Herefordshire Council through the Ukraine Community Integration grant scheme.
New Leaf is working in partnership with Herefordshire Community Network for Ukraine, Herefordshire Council’s libraries, Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre and the University of Venice’s DiGE department (Ethnobotany of divided generations in the context of centralization).
Krayina translates as home, country, one’s roots, but also a landscape, earth, countryside, and wilderness.
The Krayina project supports Ukrainian communities living in Herefordshire, England, with a nature and art socially engaged project. It engages with Ukrainians to reflect and
builds on the needs and cultural context of people’s experiences. By creatively link people with the nature and landscape here, in a rural part of England, with ethnobotanical (the study of a region’s plants and their practical uses through traditional cultural knowledge) research and memories of landscapes in Ukraine, we are working with Ukrainian ethnobotanists through the University of Venice to create an archive of nature-based cultural information. DiGe (unive.it). The project will help in the understanding of obtaining, managing and perceiving of local natural resources, particularly plants, this research is crucial for ensuring sustainability of human life, as the use of plants is a key for survival of humans.
Using visual art, poetry/writing, photography medicine, food, music and dance as mediums for an exploration of the healing power of nature to overcome war, trauma, and loss. By celebrating and exploring Ukrainian nature-based culture and visiting landscapes here and referencing those in Ukraine. Co-creating artwork in workshops to create an exhibition shown alongside the ethnobotanical archive. We are exploring and share people’s childhood experiences in Ukrainian nature, visiting nature spaces, collecting or viewing plants, exploring their cultural meanings and purposes in medicine, folk-lore and cooking. The second step could be to engage them to search for the familiar plants in English environment or something similar. Can connect to local nature in UK as they were connected in Ukraine? Can they reflect on the reasons (why yes or not)? What feelings and emotions does it provoke? Can they express those feeling through the art?
Contact email@jaimejackson.org about this project