Ground Lab: Intro To Soft Plant Fibre Basketry with Mollie McMillen (14+)

Join basket-maker Mollie McMillen for a walk to harvest local plants, learn how to dry them, and try your hand at simple weaving techniques.
About this Event

How can practices of weaving rebuild our relationships with the land?
Join basket-maker Mollie McMillen for a foraging walk to harvest local plants, learn how to dry and store them, and try your hand at some simple, foundational basket-weaving techniques, with a focus on plants and fibres from the garden.
Building on the Material[s] Matter open sessions when Mollie first joined us on site in 2023, this session will dive deeper into what it means to practice our Design With The Ecoregion design principle together, taking the ideas behind the Building Skills research by Material Cultures off the page and exploring the context of weaving as an act of resistance and repairing our relationships with the land together.
Please do register your place for this introductory workshop to avoid disappointment, as places are limited. We ask that you are able to commit the full session as far as possible. No previous experience is required to take part; Mollie will be your trusty guide! A shared lunch and refreshments are also included.
This session is for people aged 14+. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.
As part of Ground Lab, this focused session for a smaller group will be followed by relaxed open workshops with Mollie on Saturday 19th August and Sunday 20th August in South Loop Park. These drop in sessions will create space for learning and connecting with some of our most ancient skills in the form of cordage making and weaving with plant materials sourced from the neighbourhood and beyond.
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What To Expect

• The day will start at Retrofit House with an introduction to the discipline of soft plant fibre basketry, with a focus on plants and fibres from the garden.
• After connecting around the context of weaving as an act of resistance and repairing our relationships with the land, we will take a guided foraging walk around the local canal paths to identify local plants and their implications and possibilities for weaving.
• We will harvest some small samples with sensitivity to good practice, securing the plants for future growth, scattering seeds where possible and caretaking of the plants.
• On our return to Retrofit House, we will look at how to dry and store plant materials in preparation for weaving, referring to Mollie’s plant library for inspiration of materials you can find in your garden to weave with.
• We’ll finish with learning some simple, foundational basket-weaving techniques, bringing the practices we’ve learned into a world of opportunity for continued making practice.
  Due to the walkshop element of the session, please wear suitable clothing for spending time outside for long periods, be that in the sunshine or rain.
  

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About Mollie McMillen

Mollie McMillen is Yeoman basket maker, working out of her workshop in Privett, Hampshire. Mollie’s basketry story started in the woods in West Sussex where she trained to be a bushcraft instructor. Around the open fire, she first learned to use tree barks to make pouches and vessels. That was her ‘lightbulb’ moment and she knew she would always need to weave!
Over time a broad collection of plant materials formed and many baskets were made with a wide range of plants, fibres and barks. Mollie is happiest when harvesting, creating connections with plants, adding to her mental maps which cover the landscape and walking home with bunches of foliage under her arm.
Now, Mollie weaves in willow, rush, bark and many mixed plant materials and weaves a wide range of projects and commissions from interior lighting, fencing, coffins and of course plant fibre baskets.
molliemcmillen.co.uk

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About Ground Lab

“There are more living organisms in a tablespoon of soil
than there are people on Earth.”
—Pamela Shor, Black Rootz

Ground Lab is a shared open enquiry by CIVIC SQUARE, Material Cultures, an ecosystem of practitioners, neighbours, and all of you who join us, to discover together how we design, construct and steward our homes, streets and neighbourhood(s) in relation to the ground as living infrastructure. This includes building and protecting soil, cycling water, growing food, regulating temperature, reimagining the materials around us, and creating caring, social habitats for neighbours; including our more-than-human ones.
Bringing together neighbours, gardeners, ecologists, landscape practitioners, artists, builders, and more from near and far, we will gather Friday 14th—Tuesday 18th August for practical workshops, site visits, walks, conversations, shared meals, and more to pool our skills, knowledges, ideas and experiences in an open, curious environment; activating our sites and streets as classrooms.
What we unearth together over 5 days will directly inform the next stages of design for our Neighbourhood Public Square and Retrofit House sites together, including how their gardens and landscaping can (re)generate social-ecological co-benefits both locally and globally. Whatever your interests or experience, we warmly invite you to learn together with us, with a continued role for everyone in the reimagination of our relationship/s to land, materials and each other to face the challenges and opportunities ahead together.
Dig a little deeper: bit.ly/GroundLabCS
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Is This For Me?

Ground Lab is an open, shared enquiry with no prior knowledge needed to take part. We're looking to explore the possibilities of bringing together different kinds of knowledge, skills and experiences — from those who work with the land, plants and materials every day, to others who are simply curious about how our homes, streets and neighbourhoods might relate differently to the ground beneath them.
As we continue to discover the possibilities and relationships for the ongoing design and construction of Negihbourhood Public Square and Retrofit House, we would love to connect with any gardeners, landscape designers, ecologists and other practitioners who work with the land across Birmingham or the West Midlands, who are actively excited by the intersections of these Ground Lab enquiries.
This session is for people aged 14+. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.
You Might Love This If...

• You live in Ladywood or the wider city and are keen to openly discover pathways and opportunities for the Neighbourhood Public Square and Retrofit House sites together
• You're a gardener, landscape designer, ecologist, grower, builder or practitioner working in Birmingham or the West Midlands whose practice is rooted in ecological principles, or you're excited by the opportunity to build skills, knowledge and relationships across these intersections
• You're curious about the relationships between ecology, landscapes, retrofit and the places we live, and what becomes possible when we consider the ground as living infrastructure
• You are involved in the co-design and building of civic spaces in your own neighbourhood, or are interested in retrofit at the street and neighbourhood scale
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Access & Wellbeing

This Ground Lab session will take place take place in and around the Retrofit House site at , and includes a 60—90mins walk around the local canals.

• We regret that access into the house is not currently wheelchair accessible due to both the doorway raised above street level and a narrow entranceway
  
• This Ground Lab activity will be focused on the ground floor, but please note there are steep stairs up to the first and second floor rooms, with no lift available
  
• The house is in the early stages of a strip out process, with flooring uneven in places and many features that need care and repair. Please ensure to navigate carefully
  
• The house has toilet facilities available on both the ground floor and first floor. The main toilet will be on the first floor and the ground floor toilet is available for neighbours with access requirements
  
• All children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult and supervised at all times
  
• Due to the limited space we are unable to accommodate buggies at the house

There is space to share any access requirements with us in the sign up form, and we will seek to support these wherever possible, as well as being honest about the limitations of our site(s) in their current condition of construction. If you would like any further information to support your visit, please e-mail [email protected].

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About Street Labs

Ground Lab has grown out of our Street Labs learning with Link Road—connecting the care and repair of everyday systems and relationships as the conditions to reimagine retrofit together as a street; from the drains beneath our feet and gutters overhead, to what we dream our front gardens and shared alleyways could be like.
This builds deeply on a range shared practice over the past 5 years, including 3°C Neighbourhood, Retrofit Reimagined, Re:Builders, Neighbourhood Trade School, Retrofit Street Learning Journey and the Link Road Dream Fund.
Street Labs are one part of a Site As A Classroom approach, a long-term collective practice to ensure every phase of designing, building, repairing and stewarding our sites is an open, inclusive, and shared opportunity for learning together in our neighbourhood and beyond.
Our intention is for our team, neighbourhood, and wider national and industrial scales to learn from the ongoing demonstration through Neighbourhood Public Square and Retrofit House in real-time, as well as informing how we learn from what the site, ecoregion, neighbourhood, peers, and precedents can continue to teach us, without end.
Learn more: bit.ly/GroundLabCS

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