Healing Gardens

Celadon Centre for Arts & Ecologies inaugurated its Residency Programme with an eight-day writers’ residency with Dr Ros Gray and Dr Anna Colin, co-Directors of the Centre for Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths, University of London. The residency marked the beginning of an ongoing exchange between the two organisations, bringing together research, artistic practice, and collaborative writing around shared interests in ecology and decolonial thought.

The residency formed part of the broader ongoing research project Healing Gardens, which reimagines the garden as a space of care, ecological learning, and knowledge exchange. Responding to histories in which gardens have served as instruments of colonial classification, extraction, and cultural domination, the project seeks to reclaim the garden as a more-than-human environment in which alternative forms of knowledge, collective care, and ecological justice can be cultivated. Drawing on ecofeminist and decolonial perspectives, Healing Garden explores how we might learn with nature, rather than merely about it.

During their residency at Celadon, Ros Gray and Anna Colin participated in an intensive collaborative writing workshop with Elena Parpa and Evi Tselika, addressing questions of ecology, women’s histories, artistic practice, and situated knowledge. The programme also included research, site visits, and conversations that fostered a sustained exchange between the two centres and laid a ground for future collaboration.

As part of the residency, Ros Gray and Anna Colin gave two public presentations. At Celadon’s premises in Kapedes, they shared aspects of their research and practice, while at the Fine Art Programme of the University of Nicosia they introduced the work of the Goldsmiths Centre for Art and Ecology. The events brought together students, artists, researchers, and members of the public, opening a dialogue around ecological art practices, more-than-human pedagogies, and environmental care.

Dr Anna Colin is an independent curator, educator, researcher and gardener. She is engaged with critical pedagogy, ecocentric social practice, alternative modes of instituting, institutional time, and participatory landscaping. Anna directs the MFA Curating and co-directs the Centre for Art Ecology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She was a co-founder and director (2013-21), of Open School East, an independent art school and community space in London then Margate. Anna holds a PhD in cultural geography and is currently training in arboriculture. She is the author of Alternative Pedagogical Spaces: From Utopia to Institutionalization (Villa Arson and Sternberg Press, 2025).

Dr Ros Gray is Reader in Fine Art, Critical Studies and Programme Director of the MA Art & Ecology. Her research and teaching often involves collaborations with artists, scientists and activists, addressing ecological emergency with an emphasis on climate justice. Coming to ecology from a background researching militant filmmaking, she is interested in decolonial, eco-feminist and queer approaches to ecological stewardship. Ros is on the Editorial Board of Third Text and is co-commissioning editor of the Goldsmiths Press book series Planetarities. She has organised numerous international conferences and film screening programmes, public engagement relating to soil care and climate change, and she was commissioned to make the podcast ‘The Coloniality of Planting’ by Camden Art Centre for the series Botanical Minds. Ros has coordinated the Goldsmiths Allotment since 2016 and she is currently leading the development of the Art Research Garden and Laboratory.