The Colour Green

Baroness Lola Young meets poet Zena Edwards in the Old Tidemill Gardens in Deptford, South London.

Show Notes

In this episode we meet multidisciplinary performer, poet and writer Zena Edwards, who has been involved in performance for over 20 years – as a writer/poet performer, educator and creative project developer. As a lecturer, Zena is interested in demystifying and emboldening grassroots embodied knowledge fusing song, film and poetry. She is the Creative and Education Director for Verse In Dialogue (©ViD) producing projects focusing on live literature, creative community engagement, wellbeing and transformational learning. Zena chose to walk around the Old Tidemill  Gardens in South London, which has now been demolished as part of a regeneration project. She discusses how the starting point of looking at mental health and wellbeing using art brought her to the issue of climate justice, along with state violence against marginalised groups, reclaiming land as an act of resistance and community gardens.

Thank you to Zena and Lola for their time and generosity.

Follow Zena on Twitter: @ZenaEdwards
Learn more about Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine: https://platformlondon.org/background/the-life-of-ken-saro-wiwa/
Check out Voices That Shake!: https://www.voicesthatshake.org/
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What is The Colour Green?

The Colour Green is a new podcast from Julie’s Bicycle exploring the links between climate change, race, nature and social justice from the perspectives of people of colour in the UK.We are all stewards of our planet, but the effects of climate change are not shared equally. While it is people in the Global South and marginalised communities in the Global North who are the first to feel the impacts of environmental degradation, extreme weather events, food crop failure, and air pollution, their voices are rarely heard within environmental movements in the UK. Without representing communities at the sharpest end of climate impacts the stories we tell are incomplete; drawing focus to their lived experiences and creative responses are crucial to developing a holistic understanding of the causes of and solutions to this unfolding crisis.In The Colour Green podcasts, Baroness Lola Young is in conversation with artists and activists of colour who are at the forefront of social innovation - connecting climate justice, race, power and inequality.

This podcast has been developed by Julie's Bicycle as part of the Arts Council England Environmental Sustainability Programme.