Ground Lab: Lessons of Remediation with Grand Union (14+)

Come to visit Grand Union's canalside plot as we share in their learnings of remediating its contaminated soils using regenerative methods.
About this Event

What can we learn about repairing our deeply contaminated urban landscapes through ecological approaches of care, repair and collective land stewardship?
Join us for a Ground Lab enquiry visit to Grand Union in Digbeth, where we'll learn from their regenerative approach to common land, exploring how relationships of care, repair and active stewardship can begin to address the toxic legacies of our urban industrial landscapes.
We last visited Grand Union's site in 2025 as part of our Material Matter[s] Mini Series, learning about The Growing Project and the deepening relationships between soil, plants, people, histories and place through their work in the canalside plot.
Now, after nearly two years of further practice, PhD research and monitoring, the Grand Union team have more consolidated findings to share with us about the ecological impacts of their regenerative approach to soil remediation, using a combination of compost making, soil dilution and phyto-remediation (using living plants to draw our and repair contaminated soils).
Perched along the Digbeth Branch canal, Common Field serves as a living laboratory for experimental remediation and communal learning.
Please do register your place for this workshop to avoid disappointment, as space is limited. No previous experience is required to take part; the good babs of Grand Union will be our trusty guides, and we'll be learning together! We ask that you are able to commit the full session as far as possible. A shared lunch and refreshments are also included.
This session is for people aged 14+. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

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What To Expect

• This session will begin at Minerva Works with a shared vegetarian lunch to ground into the space and break bread together
• After lunch, Grand Union will introduce their core ethos and the social-environmental community activism driving The Growing Project, sharing how the unique heritage of their canalside site has shaped their approach. We'll hear about their research and practice over recent years, including their emerging findings from the PhD research embedded within the project
• From there, we will transition to the land of their canalside site to collectively explore soil vitality and its capacity for water retention across diverse ecological zones. This session provides a tactile experience with the ecological gardening and restorative practices being applied on the sites, examining how shared efforts can mend our industrial landscape
  Due to the practical nature of this session, please wear clothing that you don't mind getting mucky, and that is comfortable to wear outside for long periods, be that in train or shine.
  

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About Grand Union + The Growing Project

Grand Union is an arts organisation located in Digbeth, Birmingham. It is a place and an art practice that holds space for developing artistic, cultural, social and environmental relations for building equitable living.
The Growing Project is a transformative community programme using art making, gardening, cooking and simply being together as a way of offering support and friendship to people passing through difficult times. Their project partners include organisations who support vulnerably-housed people and those experiencing crisis. Together with artists, gardeners and environmentalists they work compassionately to facilitate weekly sessions with a variety of groups, improving inner city green sites through social and environmental transformations, creating new ecologies for people, plants and place to flourish.

www.grand-union.org.uk

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About Jo + Kieran

Jo Capper is an artist, curator, and educator dedicated to healing and community restoration. She creates regenerative cultural and living practices centered on growing or sharing food to explore communal structures and conviviality. Addressing pain and conflict through trauma-informed approaches, her work merges ecology and humanity.
Her projects materialize through collaborative exchange, shared interaction, and learning by doing. Jo has worked with Grand Union since 2018, where she instigated the Collaborative Programme—The Growing Project.
Kieran Bird is an environmentalist and skilled horticulturist who serves as the primary facilitator for the St Anne's Garden and The Common Field sites. Having joined the Growing Project as a volunteer in 2019, he now collaborates closely with Jo to guide the project's initiatives in ecological remediation and regenerative development.
In 2024, Kieran co-designed "Common Ground", a showcase garden for the BBC Gardeners' World Spring Fair that highlighted the project's phytoremediation work on post-industrial canalside land.
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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're 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 at Grand Union, including Minerva Works and the Common Ground site on the canal (5 mins walk away).

• Minerva Works is on Fazeley Street, just a short walk from Birmingham city centre and Moor Street Train Station. Grand Union is located on the second floor in Unit 19 of Minerva Works.
  
• We regret that access into the Minerva Works is not currently wheelchair accessible due to there being no working lift. They are in the process of redeveloping a building which will have lift access.
  
• If you are hard of hearing and cannot use the intercom, please ring the buzzer three times in a row and a member of the team will come down to meet you.
  
• This session is suitable for those aged 14+. All young people under 16 must be accompanied by an adult and supervised at all times.
  
• Gender-neutral toilets are available.

Detailed Grand Union Access Guide

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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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