Green Gown Awards 2020 - STUDENT - Margaret Jennings, Goldsmiths, University of London - Finalist

Sustainabiity Chamption - STUDENT - Margaret Jennings, Goldsmiths, University of London

Over the past two years I have continued to develop The Eco Haven, (Wild Life Eco Haven - WLEH), as an organic nature-centred interconnectable community, along with expanded education, research, wellbeing, and creative Eco Art Projects. It ‘promotes’ the message of tackling Climate Change through increasing biodiversity. Research on Phyto-Sensor pollution-absorbing plants, recycled clay-ceramics, and plant-dyes as an alternative to chemical student art-dyes are part of its native wildflower nectar rich composition which connects feedback on seeds to GrowWild Kew. 

This body of Eco Haven work embraces the ‘Gifted Tree Planting Exchange Ceremony’, (held at Goldsmiths Nov 2019), as an ‘Urban Inter-Unigreen Corridor-WildWay Route’. (City University Presentation 2019/20). This tree exchange now connects with King’s College London’s Sustainability Team (Feb 2020). 

Chiming with new research on tree/plant intelligences/ languages, this Eco Art works as one whole. It evokes ways to proactively care for, and re-sensitise to nature by exchange tree planting, silent walks, archivable-legacy shared tree story reading displays on handwritten recycled paper and ‘Retreevable Rub- Out- Sketch’ workshops with nature talk/discussions. It also presents The Woodland Trust’s New Tree Charter as a Proactive Learning-Tool (Durham 2019). 

Beyond this, as President of WLEH, I campaign, supporting World Land Trust endangered rainforests for new Eco Servers at University and linking Goldsmiths to the Woodland Trust as a Tree Charter Champion.     

Top 3 learnings:

1. Giving time to nature as centre, woke me to my shared DNA with the planet.  
2. Reaching out to exchange with other communities allowed me to develop, generating new ways forward. 
3. I find visually impactful socially engaged eco-art can evoke questions and space for psychological shift.