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We are offering a series of free festivals designed to foster our connection with the natural world. Starting in Spring 2025, our 3rd festival is on the 14th September and culminating in a winter festival on 6th December 2025, we invite you to celebrate with us in the gorgeous green spaces of Hawbush Community Gardens. The celebrations will deepen our connection to the local landscape and wildlife, through activities that interweave the beauty and power of the seasons with the value of being in community, encouraging us to reflect and participate in nature’s shifts throughout the year. Activities suitable for all ages and abilities will be offered ; nature trails, planting and growing, sound baths, nature crafts, and music. We will explore traditional heritage crafts such as blacksmithing, greenwood work, weaving, fire-bricks and mini chain-making with wire, that connect us to our collective local history. We will celebrate the beauty and wisdom of nature, cultivate wellbeing, and build a stronger, more cohesive community
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Reclaim our Roots is a community herbalism project, encouraging participants to engage with the seasonal cycles through the exploration of local plant companions.
Since spring of 2024 a group of people have gathered to explore the herbs growing wild around the site at Hawbush Gardens, to connect with each plant, learning about their virtues and weaving connections between art, community and nature.
At each session we meet a chosen plant ally, guiding us into deeper connection through activities like tea tasting and crafting folk medicine while sharing our personal plant stories and collaborative creativity.
2025 has seen the establishment of our very own Medicine Garden, taking the project further, by cultivating and caring for culinary and medicinal herbs on site at Hawbush Gardens.
To enquire about participating in the next yearly cycle in 2026, or for information on similar herb based projects please email Clare@ekhocollective.com
Tending is part of the Growing Land Connections Project, an exploration of how we can all make small changes to collectively make a big impact towards addressing climate change
Over its first year a diverse group of people gathered each week on the wellbeing garden, an inclusive, nourishing, gathering space. Together we developed a Climate Action Plan for our fledgling Urban Permaculture community.
In our second year we continue to use the 12 permaculture principles and the ethics; Earth Care, People Care and Fair share, to consider how we might influence the wellbeing of our Place, People and Planet. Our sessions are shaped and informed by last years learning and Climate Action Plan, learning new skills and techniques to grow in a regenerative way whilst tending our Beautiful Wellbeing Garden and building a home for our more than human kin.
This year we have also been visiting community gardens and Permaculture growing spaces for inspiration, sharing and widening our community. A recent visit to Fircroft College to learn about Birmingham Mother Garden network has inspired us to use the next 18 months of Tending to develop a Mother Garden for the Black Country at Hawbush Gardens.
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You can follow and contribute to our journey on our Tending Facebook group and by subscribing to our newsletter. If you would like to be involved in our projects in 2026 please email us for details.
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Pockets of Hope
As part of our Growing Land Connections work with Dudley Peoples School For Climate Justice, Ekho Collective are offering an open invitation to anyone who would like to share their hopes for a more sustainable world.
This year long project beginning in January 2025 warmly welcomes people and groups from Brierley Hill and Dudley Borough and also extends further beyond our local community to connect others from across the UK and even around the world.
Pockets and pouches have long been used to hold items of importance or personal importance. Our ancestors used pouches to carry herbal remedies, flint for cutting, natural cordage and personal items of significance. The introduction of pockets in men's clothing continued this tradition. Historically women's clothing usually lacked pockets partly due to designs favouring fashion rather than function. It was also common for men to carry money, keys and documents reinforcing traditional gender roles thereby reducing independence and ‘undesirable’ assertiveness of women -an embodiment of our patriarchal systems. Women however began using detachable pockets that tied around their waist under or over their skirts to carry their own items until pockets finally became incorporated into actual clothing.
Pockets Of Hope– As children (and adults!) many of us fill our pockets with treasures found in nature, treasures that move us with their beauty and remind us of our place within the natural world. Stones, mosses and feathers for example can all remind us of memories of time spent outdoors and our appreciation and connection to our more than human kin.
Our invitation is to create a pocket from recycled materials, these can take any form and be any size or shape. We would then like you to gift us an item inside your pocket that symbolises your hope for a sustainable world and a flourishing future.
This gift may be a poem, a sketch, your favourite stone, your list of climate activism ideas, a research article, a pic of someone who inspires you or even a personally handcrafted item. A note explaining your gift would also be very welcome but is optional.
Pockets can be posted to us or created and passed on in person during events in and around Dudley or during our festival workshops further afield. All pockets will be curated together at the close of the project into an interactive installation with invitations offered to all pocketmakers to gather together to explore and celebrate our many ways of capturing hope for future generations.
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Council of all Beings
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Taking inspiration from Joanna Macy - ‘the Work That Reconnects’ and guidance from ‘Coming Back to Life’ (Macy and Brown), Ekho Collective invite you to join us for The Council of All Beings - "to step aside from our human identity and speak on behalf of other life forms." (Macy)
The Council of All Beings will be co-created as a communal ritual with our participants to give voice to our More Than Human Kin. We will gather together for three sessions to embody and creatively represent other life forms that share this planet and give voice in council to their concerns about its destruction. We will then offer the strengths and gifts inherent in each life form to empower us in solidarity and move us to creative action. "And so we awaken today to a new kind of knowledge, a growing comprehension of our connectivity- and even identity- with everything in the universe.”(Macy)
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What Does A Functional/ sustainable Village Look Like?
Multi-skilled, Multi-generational, Inclusive, Democratic? Socialist? Activist?
Beyond reducing in both what we take/buy/use time on how do we look at surplus and how we responsibly use any surplus we make/create to the benefit of the village and surrounding areas. Do we link with a food bank or do we advertise on free to collect spaces such as Oleo? Can we donate produce that we have cooked or preserved ourselves. What is the red tape around this?
There are other cultures and places around the world who still practice living as a village. These communities are often secluded away from what is deemed to be normal society.
So the question then is….. is it possible to create a village mentality with in a community that lives among society as a whole but is intentional in doing and being as a village in order to create social change and champion acts of activism on a small but meaningful scale. It takes a Village is a pilot project that can be learnt from and adapted both by ourselves and by way of ripples into wider communities.
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The Village Kitchen Experiment
May saw the start of a new experimental project, taking food that is typical for a foodbank parcel and adding in foraged and freshly grown ingredients to enhance the nutritional content and enjoyment. People are invited to join us as each week as we experiment with what we can find in season on the veggie plots and in the hedgerows and any other fresh ingredients donated and cook up a storm, learning new skills and clever ways to make Michelin star food and drinks on a very tight budget.
This project will run until mid-autumn and people are welcome to join us with a special invitation going out to anyone who is using the foodbank or eligible.
Thursday mornings 10-12pm please email us in advance so we can expect you; clare@ekhocollective.com
Continuing to bring our community together through the concept 'It Takes a Village'
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Ekho Collective will offer a number of free Community activities until spring 2026, beginning with a Community Celebration on the 26th August, 12 - 3pm
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