Saturday 13th February, 2010

Ru Litherland and Clare Joy at The Epicentre, Leytonstone. 13th Feb' 2010

Organiclea at the, News from Nowhere Club, presenting and discussing the new edition of the Lee Valley Food Map



In the allotment garden of ultra local Nowhere (in particular).

Judging by the appreciative laughter, Ru Litherland gave an entertaining account of the Lee Valley, describing what (“the dickens”) it is, what has been grown there, who has lived and worked it’s soil, and it’s ascent and decline as a food producing area. 

As a social ecologist, Ru knows Lee valley as a bio region; a natural territory determined from natural boundaries. This understanding can form the basis of an ecological society, ‘The Independent Free State of the Lee Valley’. We shall dig and dream our way to citizenship. 

Ru spoke of praxis rooted in an expanse of historically fertile loam stretching from the ice age to the Saxon 6th century and up to the present day resistance of ultra locals. Holding aloft ultra local celery, leeks, carrots, grains and thee, ‘Essex Wonder’ (a near extinct tomato), Ru and the comrades saluted a fecund peasantry declaring and celebrating affinity with campaigns of sabotage and direct action against the delocalization of craft and product. An example, that of the Lee Valley malter’s 1571-1591 campaign against nationally and economically driven changes to the waterways in the valley, highlighted the complex ideological implications of land understood as infrastructure and commodity.

OrganicLea’s pamphlet maps some of the ways food, particularly its local cultivation, can be revalued through paradigmatic shifts in awareness of place. Ru’s heritage course, from Luton to Limehouse, via tributary and navigation, shared a wealth of historical nutrients to inform and nourish action; creative worldwide local responses to the feeding of a burgeoning global population.