The Hackney Colour Wheel
The Hackney Colour Wheel is a community project celebrating colour, plants, creativity and community. It takes the form of a series of natural dye workshops held by gardener and artist Kate Poland and Savile Row tailor Ruth Cava, using plants that they have grown in Cordwainers Garden.
AUTHOR: Ruth Cava
Cordwainers Garden, originally set up by local residents, supports a community of keen growers and brings people together through a joint care-taking of a beautiful patch of land. The garden has inspired a variety of workshops, events and connections over its lifetime.
We received funding from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Outreach Fund, which has supported us to plan and coordinate the workshops. We delivered these over the summer months. The funding has enabled us to promote our project and welcome people into the garden, from local business owners and talented crafts people to inquisitive children! It has meant that we have been able to purchase all the equipment and materials necessary to successfully bring this project to the community.
In the peak of the summer, the garden became a blooming oasis, full of butterflies, bees, frogs, birds and more. As the autumnal days now draw in we are harvesting vegetables, herbs, flowers, seeds and roots for a variety of projects and workshops, and for future growing seasons. Sadly as the garden has come into maturity in its eighth year, we are seeing the end of our final growing season as the site is prepared to be sold for redevelopment. Many people have passed through the garden, and whether they have tended to their plot, joined a workshop, or taken inspiration, this garden has been a place of respite and nourishment for many of us. So it is a pleasure to celebrate the garden by creating The Hackney Colour Wheel, a legacy of the beauty and creativity that can thrive from tending to the land.
The Hackney Colour Wheel demonstrates the importance of communal green spaces, and the abundance within them – especially in urban environments where access to land is limited. Sharing and teaching about plant dyes is empowering and inspiring to all of us. We have engaged in conversations around nature, fashion, craft, science and sustainable practices, while contributing to the wellbeing of the community.
The project has seen a unique coming together of tailor, gardener and chemist to explore how all three subjects, skills and knowledge intertwine with each other. We are six workshops into the project and we are chuffed with the range of colours we have created. Colour from plants is beautiful and has a 'Je ne sais quoi' that does not exist in synthetically made dye.
It has been a delight to see committed and returning participants at our workshops, and to conduct these experiments with a diverse age range of people. The project has been a continuous learning experience as we have explored new dye processes and new dye stuffs.
After an unsuccessful Japanese indigo dye bath, which we spent time puzzling over, Kate discovered the salt and squeeze method. We applied this in the second blue workshop and have revealed stunning sea blues and turquoise greens from the leaves of Japanese Indigo. We tried the same method on our native Woad plant – which usually gives us sky blues – and we achieved a surprising grass green!
Highlights of the project so far have been the abundant beauty of colour, the joy of collaborating with people and the compliments and gratitude we’ve received from everyone. We had participants from a knitting circle who loyally attended multiple workshops. They initially admitted feeling intimidated by the process of extracting colour from plants, but left feeling empowered and inspired to continue dyeing at home and to involve it in their knitting projects.
Two nieces of mine, aged 8 and 5, came to a workshop one Saturday. At the end of the day I was told "This was the best Saturday ever!". I was proud to see the children confidently engage with the adults in the group, learn something new and be proud of their own colour creations at the end. It proves to me that art and science can engage and inspire us all through creative collaboration.
The garden and the project is a constant source of inspiration to me. I will continue to incorporate plant dyes in my work as a tailor and as an educator. Sustainability within the fashion industry is a hot topic right now that I feel passionately about. This project is a beautiful way to engage people in discussion and thought over where our clothes come from, how they are coloured, what the consequences of synthetic dye are, and why we wear colour.
Get involved
Projects like this offer invaluable networking opportunities. As our time in Cordwainers Garden ends, ‘The Garden Manifesto’, a movement to safeguard our communal green spaces in the city, is gaining momentum. You can find out more about this and other projects run by Cordwainers Grow and sign the manifesto on their website
To see pictures of the project and find out what else we have been doing in the garden, read our blog or follow us on Twitter or Instagram @CordwainersGrow.
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