ROOTS Memory, Migration, Nature & Belonging

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul.” – Simone Weil

What do the plants of your childhood carry? What grows in the soil of the place you came from, and what do you take with you when you leave?

Roots is a workshop about the living connections between memory, identity, and the natural world. It begins with a simple question: which plant, flower, tree, or natural element has stayed with you across borders, languages, cities, or seasons of your life?

Grounded in queer ecology and feminist theory, this workshop approaches nature not as a backdrop but as a site of knowledge, a space that resists fixed categories and holds space for diverse ways of existing, adapting, and belonging. Drawing from the work of writers Sania Shah and Jessica J. Lee, and from examples of queerness in plant and flower life, we will reflect together on the places we come from, the places we inhabit now, and the traces we carry between them.

Migration takes many forms. Across countries and continents. Across languages. Across social worlds, families, and selves. Wherever you have moved from and toward, you bring something with you, often in ways you haven’t yet found words for. This workshop creates space to find them.

What we’ll do:

Through storytelling, group discussion, drawing, and speculative making, participants will:

• Identify a transformational plant or natural element of personal significance
• Reflect on their own relationships to place, movement, and memory
• Explore themes of anti-racism, collective storytelling, and the right to exist
• Draw their chosen plant onto shrink plastic paper
• Bake their drawing into a small durable object, a pendant, keychain, pin, magnet, or personal talisman, something they can carry with them

The final object is more than a craft. It is a way of saying: I came from somewhere. I carry it with me. I am here.

No prior knowledge, experience, or materials required. All drawing materials are provided.

Workshop facilitated by Nazgol Sobhani (she/her) This workshop has been tested and developed through Mary Maggic’s Workshopology course. More of Nazgol’s work at nazok.art

Duration: 60–90 minutes