We were delighted to offer a workshop at the UNESCO REILA Spring School 2026. This was developed from the Permaculture ethics of ‘Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share’. This was a wonderful opportunity to share what we had learned from working with the children involved in our SDLL project.
During the workshop we invited participants to interact with a range of common plant-based materials and ask what memories and associations are evoked by these. Plants have their own migration stories which are entwined with the history of human movement patterns across the planet. Humans and plants are literally and metaphorically rooted in the local ecology; however, they are also simultaneously in constant motion and movement through time and space. By sharing plant knowledge, naming, and making connections, we offered a context to explore language and cultural perspectives which draw on these shared histories, including our commonalities and differences. How do plants connect us to a place, a person, or a time in our life? This thinking builds on our learning from our project ‘Sustainable Designs for Living and Learning: embedding multilingualism into learning for sustainability’.
The workshop began with participants sitting in a circle and a warm welcome to the session. This is followed by an energising icebreaker led by Pinar called “This is Not a Stick,” where a simple stick is passed round the group and transformed into something else through creativity, and storytelling. A golden thread of connection is created around the room as the stick is passed on, pondered with, and transformed through the power of imagination. The activity engaged everyone playfully and creatively, setting the tone for the session ahead.
“This is not a stick…this is a portal into a different universe”
“This is not a stick….this is Harry Potter’s wand”
“This is not a stick… this is violin bow”
Jane and Pinar then introduced the three-permaculture ethics – People Care, Earth Care, and Fair Share – and discuss how these principles underpin the project. The discussion highlighted how sustainability extends beyond environmental concerns where nature might be othered, to include human cultural diversity, language and community wellbeing.
The heart of this workshop is the embodied and sensory experiences of engaging with plants materials. We used commonly found plants i.e. those which would be easily recognised such as dandelions, mint, ginger, sage, lovage, bay, sprigs of blackcurrant leaves, chives, etc. Jane introduced the common dandelion which grows in abundance at this time of year, noting that every part of this plant can be named, eaten, and used medicinally. The dandelion is often known as ‘pee the bed’ signifying its diuretic qualities: this illustrates how plant names are important carriers of local community knowledge passed down through generations. Each person was then invited to select a plant to touch, smell, observe and share knowledge about. Do names of plants provide clues to how humans have interacted or utilised them?
As stories began to emerge, participants offered reflections inspired by scents, textures, colours, and personal associations. The activity revealed how deeply sensory experiences are powerful in connecting us to our histories, languages, families, and cultural identities.
The workshop concluded with a creative plant activity. Participants selected paper and used plant materials to create unique prints, drawings and patterns. Alongside their designs, they were invited to write messages, memories, or words in any language that was meaningful to them. We were fortunate to have such a linguistically diverse audience and this multilingual element demonstrated how language can serve as a bridge between personal memories and collective experiences. One participant shared their ’lightbulb’ moment on realising that they knew the French ‘pissenlit’ for dandelion but had not realised it was derived from the same meaning as ’pee the bed’.
Another group had been discussing the different cultural traditions of the dandelion seedhead. For example, the dandelion head in seed becomes a ’clock’ where the number of blows it takes to remove the seeds gives the time, something remembered from childhood. They mused that this was a rather mundane and pragmatic example contrasting the more romantic idea from another participant were blowing the seed heads ’sends our hopes and dreams out into the ether for loved ones’. While someone shared mint in Arabic, ’naenane’ written as نعناع and in Turkish it is ’nane’.
This workshop benefitted from the presence of UNESCO REILA participants who represented a very wide range of linguistic, cultural and national identities. However, this linguistic and cultural diversity is often hidden in plain sight in Scottish classroom. This points to the importance of recognising human diversity in education spaces as a key driver in flourishing creativity as well as offering pedagogical approaches to embed learning for sustainability. Equally important is our (re)connection to plants and uncovering what we know and don’t know about them. Knowledge that would have in the past been carried through generations is now at risk of being lost because of our disconnection with the plant world, at a time we need this connectivity more than ever. Reflecting on the amazing properties of the common dandelion and what collectively we can know about it and what it can do for us; the answers are surely all hiding in plain sight.
