Cultivate Create

North Kensington
Since 2022
Photograph of three children posing for a photograph holding hand-painted wooden planks, next to raised garden beds in an urban garden, outdoors.

Cultivate Create is a creative growing project for North Kensington families with a focus on wellbeing and emotional resilience. It provides a safe, non-judgmental space for families in which to be creative and connect to nature.

Photograph of a child holding a wheel barrow full of compost and looking at the camera, smiling.
Cultivate Create, 2022

Since April 2022 families in North Kensington have been working with creative gardeners Romany Taylor and Mattie O’Callaghan to cultivate an edible garden and nurture the bio-diversity of ACAVA’s Maxilla Walk Studios yard and the adjoining Maxilla Forest School Garden.

Would you like to take part in this programme?

March 2023 – ongoing

Join us this spring and summer to build on previous work done to the Maxilla Walk Studios yard and Forest School garden through creative-making sessions.

Families have the chance to learn how to grow from seed to harvest and create artworks to enhance the yard and garden. There is always plenty of time for free play in the wonderful Maxilla Forest School, and to take trips to other creative and growing spaces nearby.

If you and your children would like to get involved, please fill out this form.

A group of children hold cucumbers freshly picked from a garden bed in an urban garden
Cultivate Create. Photo by ACAVA
Programme participants gathered around a raised bed and planting seeds.
Cultivate Create taster session (April 2022). Photographed by ACAVA.

November 2022 – March 2023

Families will continue to work with artist gardeners Romany Taylor and Mattie O’Callaghan over the winter months to grow winter vegetables, prepare the soil for spring, record and enhance seasonal biodiversity and build on the continued improvement of both the Maxilla yard and Forest School garden through creative making sessions.

 

April – October 2022

The participants worked with creative gardeners Gal Leshem, Mattie O’Callaghan and Romany Taylor to create raised beds, sow, plant and nurture an edible garden and the bio-diversity of ACAVA’s Maxilla Walk Studios yard and the adjoining Maxilla Forest School Garden. In the second half of the season, the group harvested, cooked, and ate edible produce together with the wider North Kensington community.

Cultivate Create is a partnership with the NHS North Kensington Healthier Futures with support from Ernst & Young.

Would you like to take part in this programme?

Programme partners

Photograph of three children posing for a photograph holding hand-painted wooden planks, next to raised garden beds in an urban garden, outdoors.

Cultivate Create – Join today!

Cultivate Create is a creative growing project for North Kensington families with a focus on wellbeing and emotional resilience. It provides a safe, non-judgmental space for families in which to be creative and connect to nature.