Citizen Science and Art with the Earlham Institute

This project began a couple of years ago when I connected many local artists and teachers with the Barcoding the Broads project. This is an Earlham Institute (EI) public engagement activity linked to the Darwin Tree of Life Project, a national project to capture the current state of our biodiversity.

We were trained to enable people to sample the genetic code of wild plants. The final stage being managed by Sam Rowe at the EI.

Following the lockdowns I was able to finally run this activity with primary school students, funded by the charity SOS-UK with Alex Day as part of their Green Influencer's Programme. Now under my newly formed Edible East organisation I ran shadow theatre workshops integrated with the coding workshops and Tara Sampy (pictured) ran printmaking workshops using plants from the school garden. The culmination of some of this collaboration then went on display in the atrium of the Earlham Institute on Norwich Research Park for staff and visitors to the centre.
Some of these images by Jennie Pedley and Tara Sampy were created for the Edible East Art Science Trail of the Future of Food.
The lamps by Adrian Draigo were made from disposable trays and extraction tubes salvaged from Barcoding the Broads workshops by Sam Rowe.