Lora Aziz: Monuments to Collective Care
Essex Cultural Diversity Project has teamed up with artist and writer Lora Aziz, and mental health charity Trust Links for a creative commission inspired by the Growing Together community in Vange, Basildon.
Trust Links’ Growing Together Basildon project centres around a one-acre therapeutic community garden that supports adults with mental health challenges and learning disabilities. Since its formal launch in May 2023, the site has developed into a vibrant hub with log cabins, a potting shed, a wildlife pond, and raised garden beds. Participants engage in gardening, cooking and communal meals, which promote physical activity and social connection.
Over the next few months Lora will spend time with visitors and volunteers at the garden, as well as women in the local community, to co-create an engraved stone sculpture inspired by Celtic and UK rock art, which will become a permanent addition to the new zen garden. The engravings will be inspired and informed by glyphs designed in workshops on local fauna and flora folklore.
The commission will harness the power of collective care and explore our connection to the environment, working together to create monuments that celebrate the value of both human and non-human life. The project will integrate references to the species and natural heritage listed in the Local Nature Recovery Strategy for Essex, and chime with Trust Links’ core aims to improve mental health and wellbeing, reduce social isolation, and strengthen community cohesion and pride.
“For me, collective care is the recognition that wellbeing is created together. It lives in the everyday acts of tending and harvesting from a garden, sharing knowledge, making space for one another, and caring for the plants, wildlife and landscapes that, in turn, care for and sustain us. I’m excited to create something shaped not only by the landscape itself, but by the local stories, memories and acts of care shared by the community who use this garden. I look forward to celebrating the quiet, everyday gestures that sustain both people and the more-than-human world” Lora Aziz, Artist
“Essex Cultural Diversity Project is delighted to be collaborating with Trust Links on this new commission, a key partnership that we want to nurture, support and grow in relation to our strategic focus on creative health and the environment. It is a great opportunity to bring together a charity providing a much-needed service to their local community, with an artist whose creative practice is focussed on community, the environment and wellbeing. We are looking forward to seeing how Lora will enhance and help further this important work through creativity and connectivity.” Jo Nancarrow, Essex Cultural Diversity Project
About the Artist
Lora Aziz is an Egyptian–British interdisciplinary artist, cultural ecologist and researcher. Her practice explores the relationships between people, place and the more-than-human world through walking, storytelling and socially engaged research. Working across art, ecology and community participation, she is interested in how landscapes hold memory, and how creative practice can help us reconnect with land, water and one another.
Much of Lora’s work is place-based, collaborating with communities, ecologists, museums and public organisations to develop projects that respond to local histories, ecologies and questions of care. Recent work has focused on water, access to nature and environmental stewardship, including Blue Steps Along the Saffron Trail in Essex and the artist’s British Council COP27 commission Walking in Wadis.
Lora enjoys creating works that invite reflection and participation, bringing together contemporary art, cultural heritage and ecological thinking to create meaningful experiences rooted in place.
About Trust Links
Trust Links is an independent charity for mental health, wellbeing and the environment in Essex. They offer therapeutic gardening, recovery classes, social activities, employability support, training, environmental workshops and more. The charity works with around 4,000 people every year, with sites in Southend, Castle Point, Rochford, Braintree, Canvey Island and Basildon. Trust Links is committed to building stronger communities and transforming lives. Supporting the environment through sustainable living is at the core of their work.