'The Diaspora Garden: Watering Connections' is a project by artist Seyi Adelekun. In 2023, Adelekun built a temporary community garden on the green space beside Pelican Estate in Camberwell.
The garden was open for all residents of the estate to enjoy. Adelekun and the residents worked together to grow vegetables and plants from the diaspora. Free weekly workshops, which ran from July to August 2023, explored herbalism, mental health and storytelling through foraging, movement and fun botanical crafts. Residents grew food to eat, learnt about plant care, took part in sound bath sessions and made their own herbal tea.
One of the residents said: “I haven’t seen cucumbers growing since I was a little girl. They grew all over the hill next to my house. Its reminding me of my childhood.”
Seyi is passionate about the natural world and our connections to it. She creates spaces for people to unite and share communal land. She works in many different ways, often making large installations, drawing on her architectural background, and live performances.
Workshops were lead by:
- Seyi Adelekun
- Fabrice Boltho
- Dré Ferdinand
- Mama D Ujuaje
- Alexandra Yellop
- South London Gallery
- Bekah Earthchild
- Giselle Richelieu and Idman Abdurahaman
From 5 July – 29 October 2023, Seyi Adelekun also exhibited at the South London Gallery as part of Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes.
ABOUT SEYI ADELEKUN
Seyi Adelekun is a multidisciplinary artist of Nigerian heritage. She creates installation and performance art that encourages ecological awareness, environmental stewardship and spiritual relationship with the earth. She explores this through movement, ritual practices, making with natural materials and using regenerative circular economy principles.
Seyi’s work aims to convey the interconnectedness between all living beings by promoting biodiversity & celebrate local ecologies. Seyi sees collective making as a tool to nurture healthier relationships with our environment. Seyi explores this by facilitating creative nature workshops that focuses on creating spaces for deep connection and healing, especially within BIPOC communities, by reconnecting to ancestral ways of being with the more than human world.
Open Plan is supported by Freelands Foundation, with additional funds from Southwark Council’s Youth and Play Grant Programme and other donors.
