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BY WORKOVERTIME
In Cali, Colombia, during the UN Biodiversity Conference, a metabolic procession called “Maize Metabolics” unfolded. It was a procession centered on the sacred history, cultural significance, and contemporary challenges of maize, or corn, as we move it through the world and it moves through us. Organized by Kalpana Arias and her organisation Nowadays, in partnership with Earthed and Incredible Edible, the event invited participants to reflect on maize through the dual lens of bodily and eco-industrial processes. As designed and scripted by Louise Carver and Jamie Allen (as WORKOVERTIME) it was an honoring of maize as both an ancient staple and a symbol of the resilience and the diversities of poly-cultures within and outwith the human body.
The processional began with a reflective introduction, explaining the concept of maize as a partner in metabolic processes—both within our bodies and across landscapes. Participants gathered around tables of corn-based products and traditional corn dishes, transforming the act of eating into a communal ritual. All were introduced to the idea that maize, a cereal that requires collaboration with our diverse gut flora for digestion, symbolizes a broader partnership: the movement for the right to grow—the right to cultivate urban biodiversity, to nurture the metabolism of cities, and to support the earth’s ecological health for people and nature. This reflection set the tone for eating and reading exercises, in which maize was explored as both a physical sustenance and a metaphor for communal resilience
After taking a bite of something "corn-y", and reading aloud from a prepared booklet, the digestive journey of maize was recounted. It began in the mouth, where teeth and enzymes like amylase start the process of breaking down starches before moving through the digestive system, relying on the partnership of gut flora to release nutrients. A section of the event drew inspiration from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. Participants reflected on her questions about metabolic literacies and the importance of gratitude—not just for what we take into our bodies, but for what we return to the earth. This plea for greater awareness of our digestive cycles adds sacredness to the act of eating and excreting, challenging participants to rethink their relationships with these often- and overly-overlooked processes.
Another aspect of the event focused on urban biodiversity and the parallels between cultivating diversity in our gut and in our environments. Drawing on the work of Silvio Gesell, the participants were invited to imagine the planet as a giant stomach, with the soil acting as an extension of their gut biome. This perspective highlighted the probiotic approach—a vibrant shift towards nurturing life in partnership with nature, as opposed to the extractive and reductive practices of industrial agriculture. Participants were encouraged to explore how they could build more probiotic cities, nurturing biodiversity both within and outside themselves.
The procession also included a reading of the Corn Mother Prayer—a collective expression of gratitude for maize, recognizing its role in sustaining human life and asking how we might care for it in return. This was a moment to reflect on how to cultivate maize in ways that respect its heritage and restore the environments it once thrived in, as a collaborative cultivation.
The event concluded with an invitation for participants to write their reflections and thoughts on a blank page in the prepared booklet—to consider how maize moves through their bodies, the gifts and energies it provides, and how they might envision a probiotic future for their cities. A closing discussion tied together the themes of seed sovereignty, urban growing, and biotic partnerships, emphasizing the interconnected nature of all metabolic processes and the importance of community-driven approaches to cultivating biodiversity.
Maize Metabolics was more than an exploration of maize as a food source—it was a call to action to reimagine our metabolic relationships, to liberate maize from industrial monocultures, and to liberate out guts from biomic ones. Through this procession, participants in Cali have left a mark—a vision for a more connected, probiotic way of living that honors the deep history of maize and embraces its potential for nourishing bodies, communities, and ecosystems alike.
PART 1
A metabolic procession of maize, inside and outside the body, reckons with its biological potential as sustenance, its cultural traditions, as well as the implications of industrial transformation. Maize monocultures, driven by profit, have disrupted local ecologies and cultural traditions, turning maize from a shared lifeforce into a controlled commodity. Can we reflect, together, on metabolic partnerships and on forms of freedom—between bodies and cities, economies and ecologies—in acts of liberation which move maize through the body as we move our bodies through the world?
PART 2
Eating maize directly, begins, most typically, in the mouth. Teeth crush the kernels, bringing enzymes like amylase in contact with starches, transforming them into simpler sugars. From here, the chewed corn moves down the oesophagus into the stomach, where acidic gastric juices and enzymes like pepsin begin digesting the proteins. But much of the corn remains intact.
The small intestine is where our internal biodiversity really thrives, mixing with bile from the liver, breaking down fats, while pancreatic enzymes continue the process of digestion. The intestinal walls are covered in villi and microvilli, harbouring a multitude of bacteria that break down nutrients. This microscopic community works together to extract glucose, amino acids, and minerals, absorbing them into the bloodstream and making them available for energy and nourishment.
In the large intestine, a further community of bacteria ferment fibres, releasing short-chain fatty acids, and gases. Water is absorbed, and what remains, forms the stool. The journey of maize through the individual body concludes here, transitioning toward the collective systems of metabolic waste handling—a reminder of how individual and communal processes are interlinked.
PART 3
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti offers insights on how to gradually part with our habits of living that harm ourselves, other human and nonhuman beings, and to the metabolic movements of the planet at large. She pleas for greater metabolic literacies and invokes prayers for our shit:
“We offer prayers for things that go into our bodies, but not for what comes out. Across cultures, we have practices of gratitude toward those responsible for bringing the food to our tables. Some cultures also pray for the food to give them health and strength to be in service of others. But, what would a prayer look like for what we return to the earth?”
“Who or what would you be grateful for? What could be a good prayer for your shit and the land that will receive it? Think beyond your own digestion. If everything is sacred, excretion should not be an exception. Take a moment to think about what your toilet socialisation has given you and deprived you of? The next time you need to go to the bathroom, pause for a while as things are brewing, and contemplate that part of you that will be released in a metabolic cycle that does not stop with the flush.”
PART 4
For the 19th Century economist and merchant Silvio Gesell, the whole planet was to be conceived as a giant stomach, pre-preparing photosynthetic energies and unpalatable matter so as to be absorbed into our digestive system, our bloodstreams, our organs and neural tissues. Imagine the biome of your gut as an extension of the soil.
Rewilding and the right to grow parallel contemporary interests in tending to our own bodily biodiversity for harmonised nutrition and health. All represent a vibrant shift toward probiotic approaches. This new imaginary for how we manage life and nurture health contrasts with the antibiotics of the 20th century and deadening forms of development. Imagine “probiotic” in its most expansive form: human interventions that harness life to tend to life itself, working with overflowing and abundant forms of evolutionary creativity, in partnership.
To think probiotically helps us move between scales, imagining the metabolic needs of our own cellular health, the ecosystem functions of landscapes, the biodiversity of our cities and the vast photosynthesising biological sinks of our planet regulating the Earth's atmosphere.
PART 5
To the maize, the mother, we express gratitude, for your role in sustaining us. We acknowledge the history we share. How can we best care for one another now? What practices would allow you to thrive, and to grow in balance with the world around us?
Could we understand, together, how to cultivate you in ways that respect your natural growth, your roots, and your heritage. Can we work to repair the harm that has been done—restoring the environments that once nurtured you and adapting our cities and regions to be more welcoming? We need your partnership now, more than ever.
How do we build and rebuild, in ways that allow your presence in our cities and fields, that allow us to thrive alongside one another? How might we weave our metabolic health together to sustain our bodies and the common conditions for all life?
REFERENCES
De Oliveira, V. M. (2021). Hospicing modernity. North Atlantic Books.
Gesell, S. (1916/1958). The Natural Economic Order. London: Peter Owen, Ltd.
Lorimer, J. (2020). The probiotic planet: Using life to manage life. U of Minnesota Press.
Mol, A. (2021). Eating in theory. Duke University Press.
PART 6
About Right To Grow at COP16 Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible
If you eat, you’re in.
Maize Metabolics is a part of Right To Grow Let’s Plant The Future
A roundtable on the right to grow looking at how local food growing can benefit people and nature. This session will bring together policymakers, a global network of city leaders, grassroots organisers, growers, local councils, and businesses to discuss the right to grow and challenges, barriers and access to growing in cities. We’ll dig into the role of policy, people power, and cyber tools in future-proofing cities and growing pockets of nature in streets and neighbourhoods for people to find their own planet-fixing solutions.
Together we’ll be planting a new food future using metabolics, locally-led growing projects, and policymaking as examples for thinking about food systems and biodiversity differently. Building on the right to grow, we will go over the tools to scale mass mobilisation and bring nature (plus food) back to our cities from the ground up.
Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible and WORKOVERTIME
Be a part of a Global Learning Network on the Right To Grow and let’s bring nature (and food) to your city. JOIN HERE
Images 1, 2: Extracts from Maize Metabolics booklet
Iamges 3,4,5: Courtesy Science History Institute Museum & Library (public digital collections)
In Cali, Colombia, during the UN Biodiversity Conference, a metabolic procession called “Maize Metabolics” unfolded. It was a procession centered on the sacred history, cultural significance, and contemporary challenges of maize, or corn, as we move it through the world and it moves through us. Organized by Kalpana Arias and her organisation Nowadays, in partnership with Earthed and Incredible Edible, the event invited participants to reflect on maize through the dual lens of bodily and eco-industrial processes. As designed and scripted by Louise Carver and Jamie Allen (as WORKOVERTIME) it was an honoring of maize as both an ancient staple and a symbol of the resilience and the diversities of poly-cultures within and outwith the human body.
The processional began with a reflective introduction, explaining the concept of maize as a partner in metabolic processes—both within our bodies and across landscapes. Participants gathered around tables of corn-based products and traditional corn dishes, transforming the act of eating into a communal ritual. All were introduced to the idea that maize, a cereal that requires collaboration with our diverse gut flora for digestion, symbolizes a broader partnership: the movement for the right to grow—the right to cultivate urban biodiversity, to nurture the metabolism of cities, and to support the earth’s ecological health for people and nature. This reflection set the tone for eating and reading exercises, in which maize was explored as both a physical sustenance and a metaphor for communal resilience
After taking a bite of something "corn-y", and reading aloud from a prepared booklet, the digestive journey of maize was recounted. It began in the mouth, where teeth and enzymes like amylase start the process of breaking down starches before moving through the digestive system, relying on the partnership of gut flora to release nutrients. A section of the event drew inspiration from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. Participants reflected on her questions about metabolic literacies and the importance of gratitude—not just for what we take into our bodies, but for what we return to the earth. This plea for greater awareness of our digestive cycles adds sacredness to the act of eating and excreting, challenging participants to rethink their relationships with these often- and overly-overlooked processes.
Another aspect of the event focused on urban biodiversity and the parallels between cultivating diversity in our gut and in our environments. Drawing on the work of Silvio Gesell, the participants were invited to imagine the planet as a giant stomach, with the soil acting as an extension of their gut biome. This perspective highlighted the probiotic approach—a vibrant shift towards nurturing life in partnership with nature, as opposed to the extractive and reductive practices of industrial agriculture. Participants were encouraged to explore how they could build more probiotic cities, nurturing biodiversity both within and outside themselves.
The procession also included a reading of the Corn Mother Prayer—a collective expression of gratitude for maize, recognizing its role in sustaining human life and asking how we might care for it in return. This was a moment to reflect on how to cultivate maize in ways that respect its heritage and restore the environments it once thrived in, as a collaborative cultivation.
The event concluded with an invitation for participants to write their reflections and thoughts on a blank page in the prepared booklet—to consider how maize moves through their bodies, the gifts and energies it provides, and how they might envision a probiotic future for their cities. A closing discussion tied together the themes of seed sovereignty, urban growing, and biotic partnerships, emphasizing the interconnected nature of all metabolic processes and the importance of community-driven approaches to cultivating biodiversity.
Maize Metabolics was more than an exploration of maize as a food source—it was a call to action to reimagine our metabolic relationships, to liberate maize from industrial monocultures, and to liberate out guts from biomic ones. Through this procession, participants in Cali have left a mark—a vision for a more connected, probiotic way of living that honors the deep history of maize and embraces its potential for nourishing bodies, communities, and ecosystems alike.
PART 1
A metabolic procession of maize, inside and outside the body, reckons with its biological potential as sustenance, its cultural traditions, as well as the implications of industrial transformation. Maize monocultures, driven by profit, have disrupted local ecologies and cultural traditions, turning maize from a shared lifeforce into a controlled commodity. Can we reflect, together, on metabolic partnerships and on forms of freedom—between bodies and cities, economies and ecologies—in acts of liberation which move maize through the body as we move our bodies through the world?
PART 2
Eating maize directly, begins, most typically, in the mouth. Teeth crush the kernels, bringing enzymes like amylase in contact with starches, transforming them into simpler sugars. From here, the chewed corn moves down the oesophagus into the stomach, where acidic gastric juices and enzymes like pepsin begin digesting the proteins. But much of the corn remains intact.
The small intestine is where our internal biodiversity really thrives, mixing with bile from the liver, breaking down fats, while pancreatic enzymes continue the process of digestion. The intestinal walls are covered in villi and microvilli, harbouring a multitude of bacteria that break down nutrients. This microscopic community works together to extract glucose, amino acids, and minerals, absorbing them into the bloodstream and making them available for energy and nourishment.
In the large intestine, a further community of bacteria ferment fibres, releasing short-chain fatty acids, and gases. Water is absorbed, and what remains, forms the stool. The journey of maize through the individual body concludes here, transitioning toward the collective systems of metabolic waste handling—a reminder of how individual and communal processes are interlinked.
PART 3
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti offers insights on how to gradually part with our habits of living that harm ourselves, other human and nonhuman beings, and to the metabolic movements of the planet at large. She pleas for greater metabolic literacies and invokes prayers for our shit:
“We offer prayers for things that go into our bodies, but not for what comes out. Across cultures, we have practices of gratitude toward those responsible for bringing the food to our tables. Some cultures also pray for the food to give them health and strength to be in service of others. But, what would a prayer look like for what we return to the earth?”
“Who or what would you be grateful for? What could be a good prayer for your shit and the land that will receive it? Think beyond your own digestion. If everything is sacred, excretion should not be an exception. Take a moment to think about what your toilet socialisation has given you and deprived you of? The next time you need to go to the bathroom, pause for a while as things are brewing, and contemplate that part of you that will be released in a metabolic cycle that does not stop with the flush.”
PART 4
For the 19th Century economist and merchant Silvio Gesell, the whole planet was to be conceived as a giant stomach, pre-preparing photosynthetic energies and unpalatable matter so as to be absorbed into our digestive system, our bloodstreams, our organs and neural tissues. Imagine the biome of your gut as an extension of the soil.
Rewilding and the right to grow parallel contemporary interests in tending to our own bodily biodiversity for harmonised nutrition and health. All represent a vibrant shift toward probiotic approaches. This new imaginary for how we manage life and nurture health contrasts with the antibiotics of the 20th century and deadening forms of development. Imagine “probiotic” in its most expansive form: human interventions that harness life to tend to life itself, working with overflowing and abundant forms of evolutionary creativity, in partnership.
To think probiotically helps us move between scales, imagining the metabolic needs of our own cellular health, the ecosystem functions of landscapes, the biodiversity of our cities and the vast photosynthesising biological sinks of our planet regulating the Earth's atmosphere.
PART 5
To the maize, the mother, we express gratitude, for your role in sustaining us. We acknowledge the history we share. How can we best care for one another now? What practices would allow you to thrive, and to grow in balance with the world around us?
Could we understand, together, how to cultivate you in ways that respect your natural growth, your roots, and your heritage. Can we work to repair the harm that has been done—restoring the environments that once nurtured you and adapting our cities and regions to be more welcoming? We need your partnership now, more than ever.
How do we build and rebuild, in ways that allow your presence in our cities and fields, that allow us to thrive alongside one another? How might we weave our metabolic health together to sustain our bodies and the common conditions for all life?
REFERENCES
De Oliveira, V. M. (2021). Hospicing modernity. North Atlantic Books.
Gesell, S. (1916/1958). The Natural Economic Order. London: Peter Owen, Ltd.
Lorimer, J. (2020). The probiotic planet: Using life to manage life. U of Minnesota Press.
Mol, A. (2021). Eating in theory. Duke University Press.
PART 6
About Right To Grow at COP16 Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible
If you eat, you’re in.
Maize Metabolics is a part of Right To Grow Let’s Plant The Future
A roundtable on the right to grow looking at how local food growing can benefit people and nature. This session will bring together policymakers, a global network of city leaders, grassroots organisers, growers, local councils, and businesses to discuss the right to grow and challenges, barriers and access to growing in cities. We’ll dig into the role of policy, people power, and cyber tools in future-proofing cities and growing pockets of nature in streets and neighbourhoods for people to find their own planet-fixing solutions.
Together we’ll be planting a new food future using metabolics, locally-led growing projects, and policymaking as examples for thinking about food systems and biodiversity differently. Building on the right to grow, we will go over the tools to scale mass mobilisation and bring nature (plus food) back to our cities from the ground up.
Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible and WORKOVERTIME
Be a part of a Global Learning Network on the Right To Grow and let’s bring nature (and food) to your city. JOIN HERE
Images 1, 2: Extracts from Maize Metabolics booklet
Iamges 3,4,5: Courtesy Science History Institute Museum & Library (public digital collections)
Kalpana Arias is a guerrilla gardener, technologist, urban greening activist and food grower, writer, speaker and the founder of Nowadays, a social enterprise fighting for urban nature. Alongside Nowadays, Kalpana campaigns for the right to grow and nature rights through urban gardening projects and tech policy reforms, has been researching technological ecologies for over 7 years, delivered a global TED talk, spoken at the United Nations, featured on Evening Standard's 30 under 30 list of Climate Activists On A Mission To Save London and Vogue, and is a trustee for GROW charity. Kalpana is currently an environmental consultant for corporations and governments and works with leading charities, institutions, brands and grassroots change-makers.
Jamie Allen is an artist-researcher, multimedia creator, ecological thinker, and the founder of projects that blend experimental art with community action. Alongside his work at the Critical Media Lab and metaLAB, Jamie collaborates on public-making, publishing, and ecological critique initiatives. He has contributed to international exhibitions, developed open research platforms, and written extensively on media materialism and infrastructural justice. His projects have been featured at venues like documenta14 and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and he regularly partners with global research institutions, grassroots groups, and arts organizations to catalyze new approaches to planetary and environmental care and relation.
Louise Carver is a human geographer and political ecologist tracing how knowledge, politics, technology and governance shape environment and society. Her work asks critical questions of value and valuation in the green and the newer frameworks of the blue economy. She combines insights from academic, policy and arts and design contexts to explore how new constellations of thought and practice might shift knowledge-governance onto new pathways. She is currently leading the programme on Convivial Conservation with TBA21 and is co-founder of the Convivial Conservation Centre at the University of Wageningen, Netherlands with colleagues in India, Brazil, South Africa and Tanzania.
BY WORKOVERTIME
In Cali, Colombia, during the UN Biodiversity Conference, a metabolic procession called “Maize Metabolics” unfolded. It was a procession centered on the sacred history, cultural significance, and contemporary challenges of maize, or corn, as we move it through the world and it moves through us. Organized by Kalpana Arias and her organisation Nowadays, in partnership with Earthed and Incredible Edible, the event invited participants to reflect on maize through the dual lens of bodily and eco-industrial processes. As designed and scripted by Louise Carver and Jamie Allen (as WORKOVERTIME) it was an honoring of maize as both an ancient staple and a symbol of the resilience and the diversities of poly-cultures within and outwith the human body.
The processional began with a reflective introduction, explaining the concept of maize as a partner in metabolic processes—both within our bodies and across landscapes. Participants gathered around tables of corn-based products and traditional corn dishes, transforming the act of eating into a communal ritual. All were introduced to the idea that maize, a cereal that requires collaboration with our diverse gut flora for digestion, symbolizes a broader partnership: the movement for the right to grow—the right to cultivate urban biodiversity, to nurture the metabolism of cities, and to support the earth’s ecological health for people and nature. This reflection set the tone for eating and reading exercises, in which maize was explored as both a physical sustenance and a metaphor for communal resilience
After taking a bite of something "corn-y", and reading aloud from a prepared booklet, the digestive journey of maize was recounted. It began in the mouth, where teeth and enzymes like amylase start the process of breaking down starches before moving through the digestive system, relying on the partnership of gut flora to release nutrients. A section of the event drew inspiration from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. Participants reflected on her questions about metabolic literacies and the importance of gratitude—not just for what we take into our bodies, but for what we return to the earth. This plea for greater awareness of our digestive cycles adds sacredness to the act of eating and excreting, challenging participants to rethink their relationships with these often- and overly-overlooked processes.
Another aspect of the event focused on urban biodiversity and the parallels between cultivating diversity in our gut and in our environments. Drawing on the work of Silvio Gesell, the participants were invited to imagine the planet as a giant stomach, with the soil acting as an extension of their gut biome. This perspective highlighted the probiotic approach—a vibrant shift towards nurturing life in partnership with nature, as opposed to the extractive and reductive practices of industrial agriculture. Participants were encouraged to explore how they could build more probiotic cities, nurturing biodiversity both within and outside themselves.
The procession also included a reading of the Corn Mother Prayer—a collective expression of gratitude for maize, recognizing its role in sustaining human life and asking how we might care for it in return. This was a moment to reflect on how to cultivate maize in ways that respect its heritage and restore the environments it once thrived in, as a collaborative cultivation.
The event concluded with an invitation for participants to write their reflections and thoughts on a blank page in the prepared booklet—to consider how maize moves through their bodies, the gifts and energies it provides, and how they might envision a probiotic future for their cities. A closing discussion tied together the themes of seed sovereignty, urban growing, and biotic partnerships, emphasizing the interconnected nature of all metabolic processes and the importance of community-driven approaches to cultivating biodiversity.
Maize Metabolics was more than an exploration of maize as a food source—it was a call to action to reimagine our metabolic relationships, to liberate maize from industrial monocultures, and to liberate out guts from biomic ones. Through this procession, participants in Cali have left a mark—a vision for a more connected, probiotic way of living that honors the deep history of maize and embraces its potential for nourishing bodies, communities, and ecosystems alike.
PART 1
A metabolic procession of maize, inside and outside the body, reckons with its biological potential as sustenance, its cultural traditions, as well as the implications of industrial transformation. Maize monocultures, driven by profit, have disrupted local ecologies and cultural traditions, turning maize from a shared lifeforce into a controlled commodity. Can we reflect, together, on metabolic partnerships and on forms of freedom—between bodies and cities, economies and ecologies—in acts of liberation which move maize through the body as we move our bodies through the world?
PART 2
Eating maize directly, begins, most typically, in the mouth. Teeth crush the kernels, bringing enzymes like amylase in contact with starches, transforming them into simpler sugars. From here, the chewed corn moves down the oesophagus into the stomach, where acidic gastric juices and enzymes like pepsin begin digesting the proteins. But much of the corn remains intact.
The small intestine is where our internal biodiversity really thrives, mixing with bile from the liver, breaking down fats, while pancreatic enzymes continue the process of digestion. The intestinal walls are covered in villi and microvilli, harbouring a multitude of bacteria that break down nutrients. This microscopic community works together to extract glucose, amino acids, and minerals, absorbing them into the bloodstream and making them available for energy and nourishment.
In the large intestine, a further community of bacteria ferment fibres, releasing short-chain fatty acids, and gases. Water is absorbed, and what remains, forms the stool. The journey of maize through the individual body concludes here, transitioning toward the collective systems of metabolic waste handling—a reminder of how individual and communal processes are interlinked.
PART 3
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti offers insights on how to gradually part with our habits of living that harm ourselves, other human and nonhuman beings, and to the metabolic movements of the planet at large. She pleas for greater metabolic literacies and invokes prayers for our shit:
“We offer prayers for things that go into our bodies, but not for what comes out. Across cultures, we have practices of gratitude toward those responsible for bringing the food to our tables. Some cultures also pray for the food to give them health and strength to be in service of others. But, what would a prayer look like for what we return to the earth?”
“Who or what would you be grateful for? What could be a good prayer for your shit and the land that will receive it? Think beyond your own digestion. If everything is sacred, excretion should not be an exception. Take a moment to think about what your toilet socialisation has given you and deprived you of? The next time you need to go to the bathroom, pause for a while as things are brewing, and contemplate that part of you that will be released in a metabolic cycle that does not stop with the flush.”
PART 4
For the 19th Century economist and merchant Silvio Gesell, the whole planet was to be conceived as a giant stomach, pre-preparing photosynthetic energies and unpalatable matter so as to be absorbed into our digestive system, our bloodstreams, our organs and neural tissues. Imagine the biome of your gut as an extension of the soil.
Rewilding and the right to grow parallel contemporary interests in tending to our own bodily biodiversity for harmonised nutrition and health. All represent a vibrant shift toward probiotic approaches. This new imaginary for how we manage life and nurture health contrasts with the antibiotics of the 20th century and deadening forms of development. Imagine “probiotic” in its most expansive form: human interventions that harness life to tend to life itself, working with overflowing and abundant forms of evolutionary creativity, in partnership.
To think probiotically helps us move between scales, imagining the metabolic needs of our own cellular health, the ecosystem functions of landscapes, the biodiversity of our cities and the vast photosynthesising biological sinks of our planet regulating the Earth's atmosphere.
PART 5
To the maize, the mother, we express gratitude, for your role in sustaining us. We acknowledge the history we share. How can we best care for one another now? What practices would allow you to thrive, and to grow in balance with the world around us?
Could we understand, together, how to cultivate you in ways that respect your natural growth, your roots, and your heritage. Can we work to repair the harm that has been done—restoring the environments that once nurtured you and adapting our cities and regions to be more welcoming? We need your partnership now, more than ever.
How do we build and rebuild, in ways that allow your presence in our cities and fields, that allow us to thrive alongside one another? How might we weave our metabolic health together to sustain our bodies and the common conditions for all life?
REFERENCES
De Oliveira, V. M. (2021). Hospicing modernity. North Atlantic Books.
Gesell, S. (1916/1958). The Natural Economic Order. London: Peter Owen, Ltd.
Lorimer, J. (2020). The probiotic planet: Using life to manage life. U of Minnesota Press.
Mol, A. (2021). Eating in theory. Duke University Press.
PART 6
About Right To Grow at COP16 Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible
If you eat, you’re in.
Maize Metabolics is a part of Right To Grow Let’s Plant The Future
A roundtable on the right to grow looking at how local food growing can benefit people and nature. This session will bring together policymakers, a global network of city leaders, grassroots organisers, growers, local councils, and businesses to discuss the right to grow and challenges, barriers and access to growing in cities. We’ll dig into the role of policy, people power, and cyber tools in future-proofing cities and growing pockets of nature in streets and neighbourhoods for people to find their own planet-fixing solutions.
Together we’ll be planting a new food future using metabolics, locally-led growing projects, and policymaking as examples for thinking about food systems and biodiversity differently. Building on the right to grow, we will go over the tools to scale mass mobilisation and bring nature (plus food) back to our cities from the ground up.
Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible and WORKOVERTIME
Be a part of a Global Learning Network on the Right To Grow and let’s bring nature (and food) to your city. JOIN HERE
Images 1, 2: Extracts from Maize Metabolics booklet
Iamges 3,4,5: Courtesy Science History Institute Museum & Library (public digital collections)
In Cali, Colombia, during the UN Biodiversity Conference, a metabolic procession called “Maize Metabolics” unfolded. It was a procession centered on the sacred history, cultural significance, and contemporary challenges of maize, or corn, as we move it through the world and it moves through us. Organized by Kalpana Arias and her organisation Nowadays, in partnership with Earthed and Incredible Edible, the event invited participants to reflect on maize through the dual lens of bodily and eco-industrial processes. As designed and scripted by Louise Carver and Jamie Allen (as WORKOVERTIME) it was an honoring of maize as both an ancient staple and a symbol of the resilience and the diversities of poly-cultures within and outwith the human body.
The processional began with a reflective introduction, explaining the concept of maize as a partner in metabolic processes—both within our bodies and across landscapes. Participants gathered around tables of corn-based products and traditional corn dishes, transforming the act of eating into a communal ritual. All were introduced to the idea that maize, a cereal that requires collaboration with our diverse gut flora for digestion, symbolizes a broader partnership: the movement for the right to grow—the right to cultivate urban biodiversity, to nurture the metabolism of cities, and to support the earth’s ecological health for people and nature. This reflection set the tone for eating and reading exercises, in which maize was explored as both a physical sustenance and a metaphor for communal resilience
After taking a bite of something "corn-y", and reading aloud from a prepared booklet, the digestive journey of maize was recounted. It began in the mouth, where teeth and enzymes like amylase start the process of breaking down starches before moving through the digestive system, relying on the partnership of gut flora to release nutrients. A section of the event drew inspiration from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. Participants reflected on her questions about metabolic literacies and the importance of gratitude—not just for what we take into our bodies, but for what we return to the earth. This plea for greater awareness of our digestive cycles adds sacredness to the act of eating and excreting, challenging participants to rethink their relationships with these often- and overly-overlooked processes.
Another aspect of the event focused on urban biodiversity and the parallels between cultivating diversity in our gut and in our environments. Drawing on the work of Silvio Gesell, the participants were invited to imagine the planet as a giant stomach, with the soil acting as an extension of their gut biome. This perspective highlighted the probiotic approach—a vibrant shift towards nurturing life in partnership with nature, as opposed to the extractive and reductive practices of industrial agriculture. Participants were encouraged to explore how they could build more probiotic cities, nurturing biodiversity both within and outside themselves.
The procession also included a reading of the Corn Mother Prayer—a collective expression of gratitude for maize, recognizing its role in sustaining human life and asking how we might care for it in return. This was a moment to reflect on how to cultivate maize in ways that respect its heritage and restore the environments it once thrived in, as a collaborative cultivation.
The event concluded with an invitation for participants to write their reflections and thoughts on a blank page in the prepared booklet—to consider how maize moves through their bodies, the gifts and energies it provides, and how they might envision a probiotic future for their cities. A closing discussion tied together the themes of seed sovereignty, urban growing, and biotic partnerships, emphasizing the interconnected nature of all metabolic processes and the importance of community-driven approaches to cultivating biodiversity.
Maize Metabolics was more than an exploration of maize as a food source—it was a call to action to reimagine our metabolic relationships, to liberate maize from industrial monocultures, and to liberate out guts from biomic ones. Through this procession, participants in Cali have left a mark—a vision for a more connected, probiotic way of living that honors the deep history of maize and embraces its potential for nourishing bodies, communities, and ecosystems alike.
PART 1
A metabolic procession of maize, inside and outside the body, reckons with its biological potential as sustenance, its cultural traditions, as well as the implications of industrial transformation. Maize monocultures, driven by profit, have disrupted local ecologies and cultural traditions, turning maize from a shared lifeforce into a controlled commodity. Can we reflect, together, on metabolic partnerships and on forms of freedom—between bodies and cities, economies and ecologies—in acts of liberation which move maize through the body as we move our bodies through the world?
PART 2
Eating maize directly, begins, most typically, in the mouth. Teeth crush the kernels, bringing enzymes like amylase in contact with starches, transforming them into simpler sugars. From here, the chewed corn moves down the oesophagus into the stomach, where acidic gastric juices and enzymes like pepsin begin digesting the proteins. But much of the corn remains intact.
The small intestine is where our internal biodiversity really thrives, mixing with bile from the liver, breaking down fats, while pancreatic enzymes continue the process of digestion. The intestinal walls are covered in villi and microvilli, harbouring a multitude of bacteria that break down nutrients. This microscopic community works together to extract glucose, amino acids, and minerals, absorbing them into the bloodstream and making them available for energy and nourishment.
In the large intestine, a further community of bacteria ferment fibres, releasing short-chain fatty acids, and gases. Water is absorbed, and what remains, forms the stool. The journey of maize through the individual body concludes here, transitioning toward the collective systems of metabolic waste handling—a reminder of how individual and communal processes are interlinked.
PART 3
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti offers insights on how to gradually part with our habits of living that harm ourselves, other human and nonhuman beings, and to the metabolic movements of the planet at large. She pleas for greater metabolic literacies and invokes prayers for our shit:
“We offer prayers for things that go into our bodies, but not for what comes out. Across cultures, we have practices of gratitude toward those responsible for bringing the food to our tables. Some cultures also pray for the food to give them health and strength to be in service of others. But, what would a prayer look like for what we return to the earth?”
“Who or what would you be grateful for? What could be a good prayer for your shit and the land that will receive it? Think beyond your own digestion. If everything is sacred, excretion should not be an exception. Take a moment to think about what your toilet socialisation has given you and deprived you of? The next time you need to go to the bathroom, pause for a while as things are brewing, and contemplate that part of you that will be released in a metabolic cycle that does not stop with the flush.”
PART 4
For the 19th Century economist and merchant Silvio Gesell, the whole planet was to be conceived as a giant stomach, pre-preparing photosynthetic energies and unpalatable matter so as to be absorbed into our digestive system, our bloodstreams, our organs and neural tissues. Imagine the biome of your gut as an extension of the soil.
Rewilding and the right to grow parallel contemporary interests in tending to our own bodily biodiversity for harmonised nutrition and health. All represent a vibrant shift toward probiotic approaches. This new imaginary for how we manage life and nurture health contrasts with the antibiotics of the 20th century and deadening forms of development. Imagine “probiotic” in its most expansive form: human interventions that harness life to tend to life itself, working with overflowing and abundant forms of evolutionary creativity, in partnership.
To think probiotically helps us move between scales, imagining the metabolic needs of our own cellular health, the ecosystem functions of landscapes, the biodiversity of our cities and the vast photosynthesising biological sinks of our planet regulating the Earth's atmosphere.
PART 5
To the maize, the mother, we express gratitude, for your role in sustaining us. We acknowledge the history we share. How can we best care for one another now? What practices would allow you to thrive, and to grow in balance with the world around us?
Could we understand, together, how to cultivate you in ways that respect your natural growth, your roots, and your heritage. Can we work to repair the harm that has been done—restoring the environments that once nurtured you and adapting our cities and regions to be more welcoming? We need your partnership now, more than ever.
How do we build and rebuild, in ways that allow your presence in our cities and fields, that allow us to thrive alongside one another? How might we weave our metabolic health together to sustain our bodies and the common conditions for all life?
REFERENCES
De Oliveira, V. M. (2021). Hospicing modernity. North Atlantic Books.
Gesell, S. (1916/1958). The Natural Economic Order. London: Peter Owen, Ltd.
Lorimer, J. (2020). The probiotic planet: Using life to manage life. U of Minnesota Press.
Mol, A. (2021). Eating in theory. Duke University Press.
PART 6
About Right To Grow at COP16 Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible
If you eat, you’re in.
Maize Metabolics is a part of Right To Grow Let’s Plant The Future
A roundtable on the right to grow looking at how local food growing can benefit people and nature. This session will bring together policymakers, a global network of city leaders, grassroots organisers, growers, local councils, and businesses to discuss the right to grow and challenges, barriers and access to growing in cities. We’ll dig into the role of policy, people power, and cyber tools in future-proofing cities and growing pockets of nature in streets and neighbourhoods for people to find their own planet-fixing solutions.
Together we’ll be planting a new food future using metabolics, locally-led growing projects, and policymaking as examples for thinking about food systems and biodiversity differently. Building on the right to grow, we will go over the tools to scale mass mobilisation and bring nature (plus food) back to our cities from the ground up.
Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible and WORKOVERTIME
Be a part of a Global Learning Network on the Right To Grow and let’s bring nature (and food) to your city. JOIN HERE
Images 1, 2: Extracts from Maize Metabolics booklet
Iamges 3,4,5: Courtesy Science History Institute Museum & Library (public digital collections)
Kalpana Arias is a guerrilla gardener, technologist, urban greening activist and food grower, writer, speaker and the founder of Nowadays, a social enterprise fighting for urban nature. Alongside Nowadays, Kalpana campaigns for the right to grow and nature rights through urban gardening projects and tech policy reforms, has been researching technological ecologies for over 7 years, delivered a global TED talk, spoken at the United Nations, featured on Evening Standard's 30 under 30 list of Climate Activists On A Mission To Save London and Vogue, and is a trustee for GROW charity. Kalpana is currently an environmental consultant for corporations and governments and works with leading charities, institutions, brands and grassroots change-makers.
Jamie Allen is an artist-researcher, multimedia creator, ecological thinker, and the founder of projects that blend experimental art with community action. Alongside his work at the Critical Media Lab and metaLAB, Jamie collaborates on public-making, publishing, and ecological critique initiatives. He has contributed to international exhibitions, developed open research platforms, and written extensively on media materialism and infrastructural justice. His projects have been featured at venues like documenta14 and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and he regularly partners with global research institutions, grassroots groups, and arts organizations to catalyze new approaches to planetary and environmental care and relation.
Louise Carver is a human geographer and political ecologist tracing how knowledge, politics, technology and governance shape environment and society. Her work asks critical questions of value and valuation in the green and the newer frameworks of the blue economy. She combines insights from academic, policy and arts and design contexts to explore how new constellations of thought and practice might shift knowledge-governance onto new pathways. She is currently leading the programme on Convivial Conservation with TBA21 and is co-founder of the Convivial Conservation Centre at the University of Wageningen, Netherlands with colleagues in India, Brazil, South Africa and Tanzania.
BY WORKOVERTIME
In Cali, Colombia, during the UN Biodiversity Conference, a metabolic procession called “Maize Metabolics” unfolded. It was a procession centered on the sacred history, cultural significance, and contemporary challenges of maize, or corn, as we move it through the world and it moves through us. Organized by Kalpana Arias and her organisation Nowadays, in partnership with Earthed and Incredible Edible, the event invited participants to reflect on maize through the dual lens of bodily and eco-industrial processes. As designed and scripted by Louise Carver and Jamie Allen (as WORKOVERTIME) it was an honoring of maize as both an ancient staple and a symbol of the resilience and the diversities of poly-cultures within and outwith the human body.
The processional began with a reflective introduction, explaining the concept of maize as a partner in metabolic processes—both within our bodies and across landscapes. Participants gathered around tables of corn-based products and traditional corn dishes, transforming the act of eating into a communal ritual. All were introduced to the idea that maize, a cereal that requires collaboration with our diverse gut flora for digestion, symbolizes a broader partnership: the movement for the right to grow—the right to cultivate urban biodiversity, to nurture the metabolism of cities, and to support the earth’s ecological health for people and nature. This reflection set the tone for eating and reading exercises, in which maize was explored as both a physical sustenance and a metaphor for communal resilience
After taking a bite of something "corn-y", and reading aloud from a prepared booklet, the digestive journey of maize was recounted. It began in the mouth, where teeth and enzymes like amylase start the process of breaking down starches before moving through the digestive system, relying on the partnership of gut flora to release nutrients. A section of the event drew inspiration from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. Participants reflected on her questions about metabolic literacies and the importance of gratitude—not just for what we take into our bodies, but for what we return to the earth. This plea for greater awareness of our digestive cycles adds sacredness to the act of eating and excreting, challenging participants to rethink their relationships with these often- and overly-overlooked processes.
Another aspect of the event focused on urban biodiversity and the parallels between cultivating diversity in our gut and in our environments. Drawing on the work of Silvio Gesell, the participants were invited to imagine the planet as a giant stomach, with the soil acting as an extension of their gut biome. This perspective highlighted the probiotic approach—a vibrant shift towards nurturing life in partnership with nature, as opposed to the extractive and reductive practices of industrial agriculture. Participants were encouraged to explore how they could build more probiotic cities, nurturing biodiversity both within and outside themselves.
The procession also included a reading of the Corn Mother Prayer—a collective expression of gratitude for maize, recognizing its role in sustaining human life and asking how we might care for it in return. This was a moment to reflect on how to cultivate maize in ways that respect its heritage and restore the environments it once thrived in, as a collaborative cultivation.
The event concluded with an invitation for participants to write their reflections and thoughts on a blank page in the prepared booklet—to consider how maize moves through their bodies, the gifts and energies it provides, and how they might envision a probiotic future for their cities. A closing discussion tied together the themes of seed sovereignty, urban growing, and biotic partnerships, emphasizing the interconnected nature of all metabolic processes and the importance of community-driven approaches to cultivating biodiversity.
Maize Metabolics was more than an exploration of maize as a food source—it was a call to action to reimagine our metabolic relationships, to liberate maize from industrial monocultures, and to liberate out guts from biomic ones. Through this procession, participants in Cali have left a mark—a vision for a more connected, probiotic way of living that honors the deep history of maize and embraces its potential for nourishing bodies, communities, and ecosystems alike.
PART 1
A metabolic procession of maize, inside and outside the body, reckons with its biological potential as sustenance, its cultural traditions, as well as the implications of industrial transformation. Maize monocultures, driven by profit, have disrupted local ecologies and cultural traditions, turning maize from a shared lifeforce into a controlled commodity. Can we reflect, together, on metabolic partnerships and on forms of freedom—between bodies and cities, economies and ecologies—in acts of liberation which move maize through the body as we move our bodies through the world?
PART 2
Eating maize directly, begins, most typically, in the mouth. Teeth crush the kernels, bringing enzymes like amylase in contact with starches, transforming them into simpler sugars. From here, the chewed corn moves down the oesophagus into the stomach, where acidic gastric juices and enzymes like pepsin begin digesting the proteins. But much of the corn remains intact.
The small intestine is where our internal biodiversity really thrives, mixing with bile from the liver, breaking down fats, while pancreatic enzymes continue the process of digestion. The intestinal walls are covered in villi and microvilli, harbouring a multitude of bacteria that break down nutrients. This microscopic community works together to extract glucose, amino acids, and minerals, absorbing them into the bloodstream and making them available for energy and nourishment.
In the large intestine, a further community of bacteria ferment fibres, releasing short-chain fatty acids, and gases. Water is absorbed, and what remains, forms the stool. The journey of maize through the individual body concludes here, transitioning toward the collective systems of metabolic waste handling—a reminder of how individual and communal processes are interlinked.
PART 3
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti offers insights on how to gradually part with our habits of living that harm ourselves, other human and nonhuman beings, and to the metabolic movements of the planet at large. She pleas for greater metabolic literacies and invokes prayers for our shit:
“We offer prayers for things that go into our bodies, but not for what comes out. Across cultures, we have practices of gratitude toward those responsible for bringing the food to our tables. Some cultures also pray for the food to give them health and strength to be in service of others. But, what would a prayer look like for what we return to the earth?”
“Who or what would you be grateful for? What could be a good prayer for your shit and the land that will receive it? Think beyond your own digestion. If everything is sacred, excretion should not be an exception. Take a moment to think about what your toilet socialisation has given you and deprived you of? The next time you need to go to the bathroom, pause for a while as things are brewing, and contemplate that part of you that will be released in a metabolic cycle that does not stop with the flush.”
PART 4
For the 19th Century economist and merchant Silvio Gesell, the whole planet was to be conceived as a giant stomach, pre-preparing photosynthetic energies and unpalatable matter so as to be absorbed into our digestive system, our bloodstreams, our organs and neural tissues. Imagine the biome of your gut as an extension of the soil.
Rewilding and the right to grow parallel contemporary interests in tending to our own bodily biodiversity for harmonised nutrition and health. All represent a vibrant shift toward probiotic approaches. This new imaginary for how we manage life and nurture health contrasts with the antibiotics of the 20th century and deadening forms of development. Imagine “probiotic” in its most expansive form: human interventions that harness life to tend to life itself, working with overflowing and abundant forms of evolutionary creativity, in partnership.
To think probiotically helps us move between scales, imagining the metabolic needs of our own cellular health, the ecosystem functions of landscapes, the biodiversity of our cities and the vast photosynthesising biological sinks of our planet regulating the Earth's atmosphere.
PART 5
To the maize, the mother, we express gratitude, for your role in sustaining us. We acknowledge the history we share. How can we best care for one another now? What practices would allow you to thrive, and to grow in balance with the world around us?
Could we understand, together, how to cultivate you in ways that respect your natural growth, your roots, and your heritage. Can we work to repair the harm that has been done—restoring the environments that once nurtured you and adapting our cities and regions to be more welcoming? We need your partnership now, more than ever.
How do we build and rebuild, in ways that allow your presence in our cities and fields, that allow us to thrive alongside one another? How might we weave our metabolic health together to sustain our bodies and the common conditions for all life?
REFERENCES
De Oliveira, V. M. (2021). Hospicing modernity. North Atlantic Books.
Gesell, S. (1916/1958). The Natural Economic Order. London: Peter Owen, Ltd.
Lorimer, J. (2020). The probiotic planet: Using life to manage life. U of Minnesota Press.
Mol, A. (2021). Eating in theory. Duke University Press.
PART 6
About Right To Grow at COP16 Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible
If you eat, you’re in.
Maize Metabolics is a part of Right To Grow Let’s Plant The Future
A roundtable on the right to grow looking at how local food growing can benefit people and nature. This session will bring together policymakers, a global network of city leaders, grassroots organisers, growers, local councils, and businesses to discuss the right to grow and challenges, barriers and access to growing in cities. We’ll dig into the role of policy, people power, and cyber tools in future-proofing cities and growing pockets of nature in streets and neighbourhoods for people to find their own planet-fixing solutions.
Together we’ll be planting a new food future using metabolics, locally-led growing projects, and policymaking as examples for thinking about food systems and biodiversity differently. Building on the right to grow, we will go over the tools to scale mass mobilisation and bring nature (plus food) back to our cities from the ground up.
Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible and WORKOVERTIME
Be a part of a Global Learning Network on the Right To Grow and let’s bring nature (and food) to your city. JOIN HERE
Images 1, 2: Extracts from Maize Metabolics booklet
Iamges 3,4,5: Courtesy Science History Institute Museum & Library (public digital collections)
In Cali, Colombia, during the UN Biodiversity Conference, a metabolic procession called “Maize Metabolics” unfolded. It was a procession centered on the sacred history, cultural significance, and contemporary challenges of maize, or corn, as we move it through the world and it moves through us. Organized by Kalpana Arias and her organisation Nowadays, in partnership with Earthed and Incredible Edible, the event invited participants to reflect on maize through the dual lens of bodily and eco-industrial processes. As designed and scripted by Louise Carver and Jamie Allen (as WORKOVERTIME) it was an honoring of maize as both an ancient staple and a symbol of the resilience and the diversities of poly-cultures within and outwith the human body.
The processional began with a reflective introduction, explaining the concept of maize as a partner in metabolic processes—both within our bodies and across landscapes. Participants gathered around tables of corn-based products and traditional corn dishes, transforming the act of eating into a communal ritual. All were introduced to the idea that maize, a cereal that requires collaboration with our diverse gut flora for digestion, symbolizes a broader partnership: the movement for the right to grow—the right to cultivate urban biodiversity, to nurture the metabolism of cities, and to support the earth’s ecological health for people and nature. This reflection set the tone for eating and reading exercises, in which maize was explored as both a physical sustenance and a metaphor for communal resilience
After taking a bite of something "corn-y", and reading aloud from a prepared booklet, the digestive journey of maize was recounted. It began in the mouth, where teeth and enzymes like amylase start the process of breaking down starches before moving through the digestive system, relying on the partnership of gut flora to release nutrients. A section of the event drew inspiration from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. Participants reflected on her questions about metabolic literacies and the importance of gratitude—not just for what we take into our bodies, but for what we return to the earth. This plea for greater awareness of our digestive cycles adds sacredness to the act of eating and excreting, challenging participants to rethink their relationships with these often- and overly-overlooked processes.
Another aspect of the event focused on urban biodiversity and the parallels between cultivating diversity in our gut and in our environments. Drawing on the work of Silvio Gesell, the participants were invited to imagine the planet as a giant stomach, with the soil acting as an extension of their gut biome. This perspective highlighted the probiotic approach—a vibrant shift towards nurturing life in partnership with nature, as opposed to the extractive and reductive practices of industrial agriculture. Participants were encouraged to explore how they could build more probiotic cities, nurturing biodiversity both within and outside themselves.
The procession also included a reading of the Corn Mother Prayer—a collective expression of gratitude for maize, recognizing its role in sustaining human life and asking how we might care for it in return. This was a moment to reflect on how to cultivate maize in ways that respect its heritage and restore the environments it once thrived in, as a collaborative cultivation.
The event concluded with an invitation for participants to write their reflections and thoughts on a blank page in the prepared booklet—to consider how maize moves through their bodies, the gifts and energies it provides, and how they might envision a probiotic future for their cities. A closing discussion tied together the themes of seed sovereignty, urban growing, and biotic partnerships, emphasizing the interconnected nature of all metabolic processes and the importance of community-driven approaches to cultivating biodiversity.
Maize Metabolics was more than an exploration of maize as a food source—it was a call to action to reimagine our metabolic relationships, to liberate maize from industrial monocultures, and to liberate out guts from biomic ones. Through this procession, participants in Cali have left a mark—a vision for a more connected, probiotic way of living that honors the deep history of maize and embraces its potential for nourishing bodies, communities, and ecosystems alike.
PART 1
A metabolic procession of maize, inside and outside the body, reckons with its biological potential as sustenance, its cultural traditions, as well as the implications of industrial transformation. Maize monocultures, driven by profit, have disrupted local ecologies and cultural traditions, turning maize from a shared lifeforce into a controlled commodity. Can we reflect, together, on metabolic partnerships and on forms of freedom—between bodies and cities, economies and ecologies—in acts of liberation which move maize through the body as we move our bodies through the world?
PART 2
Eating maize directly, begins, most typically, in the mouth. Teeth crush the kernels, bringing enzymes like amylase in contact with starches, transforming them into simpler sugars. From here, the chewed corn moves down the oesophagus into the stomach, where acidic gastric juices and enzymes like pepsin begin digesting the proteins. But much of the corn remains intact.
The small intestine is where our internal biodiversity really thrives, mixing with bile from the liver, breaking down fats, while pancreatic enzymes continue the process of digestion. The intestinal walls are covered in villi and microvilli, harbouring a multitude of bacteria that break down nutrients. This microscopic community works together to extract glucose, amino acids, and minerals, absorbing them into the bloodstream and making them available for energy and nourishment.
In the large intestine, a further community of bacteria ferment fibres, releasing short-chain fatty acids, and gases. Water is absorbed, and what remains, forms the stool. The journey of maize through the individual body concludes here, transitioning toward the collective systems of metabolic waste handling—a reminder of how individual and communal processes are interlinked.
PART 3
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti offers insights on how to gradually part with our habits of living that harm ourselves, other human and nonhuman beings, and to the metabolic movements of the planet at large. She pleas for greater metabolic literacies and invokes prayers for our shit:
“We offer prayers for things that go into our bodies, but not for what comes out. Across cultures, we have practices of gratitude toward those responsible for bringing the food to our tables. Some cultures also pray for the food to give them health and strength to be in service of others. But, what would a prayer look like for what we return to the earth?”
“Who or what would you be grateful for? What could be a good prayer for your shit and the land that will receive it? Think beyond your own digestion. If everything is sacred, excretion should not be an exception. Take a moment to think about what your toilet socialisation has given you and deprived you of? The next time you need to go to the bathroom, pause for a while as things are brewing, and contemplate that part of you that will be released in a metabolic cycle that does not stop with the flush.”
PART 4
For the 19th Century economist and merchant Silvio Gesell, the whole planet was to be conceived as a giant stomach, pre-preparing photosynthetic energies and unpalatable matter so as to be absorbed into our digestive system, our bloodstreams, our organs and neural tissues. Imagine the biome of your gut as an extension of the soil.
Rewilding and the right to grow parallel contemporary interests in tending to our own bodily biodiversity for harmonised nutrition and health. All represent a vibrant shift toward probiotic approaches. This new imaginary for how we manage life and nurture health contrasts with the antibiotics of the 20th century and deadening forms of development. Imagine “probiotic” in its most expansive form: human interventions that harness life to tend to life itself, working with overflowing and abundant forms of evolutionary creativity, in partnership.
To think probiotically helps us move between scales, imagining the metabolic needs of our own cellular health, the ecosystem functions of landscapes, the biodiversity of our cities and the vast photosynthesising biological sinks of our planet regulating the Earth's atmosphere.
PART 5
To the maize, the mother, we express gratitude, for your role in sustaining us. We acknowledge the history we share. How can we best care for one another now? What practices would allow you to thrive, and to grow in balance with the world around us?
Could we understand, together, how to cultivate you in ways that respect your natural growth, your roots, and your heritage. Can we work to repair the harm that has been done—restoring the environments that once nurtured you and adapting our cities and regions to be more welcoming? We need your partnership now, more than ever.
How do we build and rebuild, in ways that allow your presence in our cities and fields, that allow us to thrive alongside one another? How might we weave our metabolic health together to sustain our bodies and the common conditions for all life?
REFERENCES
De Oliveira, V. M. (2021). Hospicing modernity. North Atlantic Books.
Gesell, S. (1916/1958). The Natural Economic Order. London: Peter Owen, Ltd.
Lorimer, J. (2020). The probiotic planet: Using life to manage life. U of Minnesota Press.
Mol, A. (2021). Eating in theory. Duke University Press.
PART 6
About Right To Grow at COP16 Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible
If you eat, you’re in.
Maize Metabolics is a part of Right To Grow Let’s Plant The Future
A roundtable on the right to grow looking at how local food growing can benefit people and nature. This session will bring together policymakers, a global network of city leaders, grassroots organisers, growers, local councils, and businesses to discuss the right to grow and challenges, barriers and access to growing in cities. We’ll dig into the role of policy, people power, and cyber tools in future-proofing cities and growing pockets of nature in streets and neighbourhoods for people to find their own planet-fixing solutions.
Together we’ll be planting a new food future using metabolics, locally-led growing projects, and policymaking as examples for thinking about food systems and biodiversity differently. Building on the right to grow, we will go over the tools to scale mass mobilisation and bring nature (plus food) back to our cities from the ground up.
Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible and WORKOVERTIME
Be a part of a Global Learning Network on the Right To Grow and let’s bring nature (and food) to your city. JOIN HERE
Images 1, 2: Extracts from Maize Metabolics booklet
Iamges 3,4,5: Courtesy Science History Institute Museum & Library (public digital collections)
Kalpana Arias is a guerrilla gardener, technologist, urban greening activist and food grower, writer, speaker and the founder of Nowadays, a social enterprise fighting for urban nature. Alongside Nowadays, Kalpana campaigns for the right to grow and nature rights through urban gardening projects and tech policy reforms, has been researching technological ecologies for over 7 years, delivered a global TED talk, spoken at the United Nations, featured on Evening Standard's 30 under 30 list of Climate Activists On A Mission To Save London and Vogue, and is a trustee for GROW charity. Kalpana is currently an environmental consultant for corporations and governments and works with leading charities, institutions, brands and grassroots change-makers.
Jamie Allen is an artist-researcher, multimedia creator, ecological thinker, and the founder of projects that blend experimental art with community action. Alongside his work at the Critical Media Lab and metaLAB, Jamie collaborates on public-making, publishing, and ecological critique initiatives. He has contributed to international exhibitions, developed open research platforms, and written extensively on media materialism and infrastructural justice. His projects have been featured at venues like documenta14 and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and he regularly partners with global research institutions, grassroots groups, and arts organizations to catalyze new approaches to planetary and environmental care and relation.
Louise Carver is a human geographer and political ecologist tracing how knowledge, politics, technology and governance shape environment and society. Her work asks critical questions of value and valuation in the green and the newer frameworks of the blue economy. She combines insights from academic, policy and arts and design contexts to explore how new constellations of thought and practice might shift knowledge-governance onto new pathways. She is currently leading the programme on Convivial Conservation with TBA21 and is co-founder of the Convivial Conservation Centre at the University of Wageningen, Netherlands with colleagues in India, Brazil, South Africa and Tanzania.
BY WORKOVERTIME
In Cali, Colombia, during the UN Biodiversity Conference, a metabolic procession called “Maize Metabolics” unfolded. It was a procession centered on the sacred history, cultural significance, and contemporary challenges of maize, or corn, as we move it through the world and it moves through us. Organized by Kalpana Arias and her organisation Nowadays, in partnership with Earthed and Incredible Edible, the event invited participants to reflect on maize through the dual lens of bodily and eco-industrial processes. As designed and scripted by Louise Carver and Jamie Allen (as WORKOVERTIME) it was an honoring of maize as both an ancient staple and a symbol of the resilience and the diversities of poly-cultures within and outwith the human body.
The processional began with a reflective introduction, explaining the concept of maize as a partner in metabolic processes—both within our bodies and across landscapes. Participants gathered around tables of corn-based products and traditional corn dishes, transforming the act of eating into a communal ritual. All were introduced to the idea that maize, a cereal that requires collaboration with our diverse gut flora for digestion, symbolizes a broader partnership: the movement for the right to grow—the right to cultivate urban biodiversity, to nurture the metabolism of cities, and to support the earth’s ecological health for people and nature. This reflection set the tone for eating and reading exercises, in which maize was explored as both a physical sustenance and a metaphor for communal resilience
After taking a bite of something "corn-y", and reading aloud from a prepared booklet, the digestive journey of maize was recounted. It began in the mouth, where teeth and enzymes like amylase start the process of breaking down starches before moving through the digestive system, relying on the partnership of gut flora to release nutrients. A section of the event drew inspiration from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. Participants reflected on her questions about metabolic literacies and the importance of gratitude—not just for what we take into our bodies, but for what we return to the earth. This plea for greater awareness of our digestive cycles adds sacredness to the act of eating and excreting, challenging participants to rethink their relationships with these often- and overly-overlooked processes.
Another aspect of the event focused on urban biodiversity and the parallels between cultivating diversity in our gut and in our environments. Drawing on the work of Silvio Gesell, the participants were invited to imagine the planet as a giant stomach, with the soil acting as an extension of their gut biome. This perspective highlighted the probiotic approach—a vibrant shift towards nurturing life in partnership with nature, as opposed to the extractive and reductive practices of industrial agriculture. Participants were encouraged to explore how they could build more probiotic cities, nurturing biodiversity both within and outside themselves.
The procession also included a reading of the Corn Mother Prayer—a collective expression of gratitude for maize, recognizing its role in sustaining human life and asking how we might care for it in return. This was a moment to reflect on how to cultivate maize in ways that respect its heritage and restore the environments it once thrived in, as a collaborative cultivation.
The event concluded with an invitation for participants to write their reflections and thoughts on a blank page in the prepared booklet—to consider how maize moves through their bodies, the gifts and energies it provides, and how they might envision a probiotic future for their cities. A closing discussion tied together the themes of seed sovereignty, urban growing, and biotic partnerships, emphasizing the interconnected nature of all metabolic processes and the importance of community-driven approaches to cultivating biodiversity.
Maize Metabolics was more than an exploration of maize as a food source—it was a call to action to reimagine our metabolic relationships, to liberate maize from industrial monocultures, and to liberate out guts from biomic ones. Through this procession, participants in Cali have left a mark—a vision for a more connected, probiotic way of living that honors the deep history of maize and embraces its potential for nourishing bodies, communities, and ecosystems alike.
PART 1
A metabolic procession of maize, inside and outside the body, reckons with its biological potential as sustenance, its cultural traditions, as well as the implications of industrial transformation. Maize monocultures, driven by profit, have disrupted local ecologies and cultural traditions, turning maize from a shared lifeforce into a controlled commodity. Can we reflect, together, on metabolic partnerships and on forms of freedom—between bodies and cities, economies and ecologies—in acts of liberation which move maize through the body as we move our bodies through the world?
PART 2
Eating maize directly, begins, most typically, in the mouth. Teeth crush the kernels, bringing enzymes like amylase in contact with starches, transforming them into simpler sugars. From here, the chewed corn moves down the oesophagus into the stomach, where acidic gastric juices and enzymes like pepsin begin digesting the proteins. But much of the corn remains intact.
The small intestine is where our internal biodiversity really thrives, mixing with bile from the liver, breaking down fats, while pancreatic enzymes continue the process of digestion. The intestinal walls are covered in villi and microvilli, harbouring a multitude of bacteria that break down nutrients. This microscopic community works together to extract glucose, amino acids, and minerals, absorbing them into the bloodstream and making them available for energy and nourishment.
In the large intestine, a further community of bacteria ferment fibres, releasing short-chain fatty acids, and gases. Water is absorbed, and what remains, forms the stool. The journey of maize through the individual body concludes here, transitioning toward the collective systems of metabolic waste handling—a reminder of how individual and communal processes are interlinked.
PART 3
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti offers insights on how to gradually part with our habits of living that harm ourselves, other human and nonhuman beings, and to the metabolic movements of the planet at large. She pleas for greater metabolic literacies and invokes prayers for our shit:
“We offer prayers for things that go into our bodies, but not for what comes out. Across cultures, we have practices of gratitude toward those responsible for bringing the food to our tables. Some cultures also pray for the food to give them health and strength to be in service of others. But, what would a prayer look like for what we return to the earth?”
“Who or what would you be grateful for? What could be a good prayer for your shit and the land that will receive it? Think beyond your own digestion. If everything is sacred, excretion should not be an exception. Take a moment to think about what your toilet socialisation has given you and deprived you of? The next time you need to go to the bathroom, pause for a while as things are brewing, and contemplate that part of you that will be released in a metabolic cycle that does not stop with the flush.”
PART 4
For the 19th Century economist and merchant Silvio Gesell, the whole planet was to be conceived as a giant stomach, pre-preparing photosynthetic energies and unpalatable matter so as to be absorbed into our digestive system, our bloodstreams, our organs and neural tissues. Imagine the biome of your gut as an extension of the soil.
Rewilding and the right to grow parallel contemporary interests in tending to our own bodily biodiversity for harmonised nutrition and health. All represent a vibrant shift toward probiotic approaches. This new imaginary for how we manage life and nurture health contrasts with the antibiotics of the 20th century and deadening forms of development. Imagine “probiotic” in its most expansive form: human interventions that harness life to tend to life itself, working with overflowing and abundant forms of evolutionary creativity, in partnership.
To think probiotically helps us move between scales, imagining the metabolic needs of our own cellular health, the ecosystem functions of landscapes, the biodiversity of our cities and the vast photosynthesising biological sinks of our planet regulating the Earth's atmosphere.
PART 5
To the maize, the mother, we express gratitude, for your role in sustaining us. We acknowledge the history we share. How can we best care for one another now? What practices would allow you to thrive, and to grow in balance with the world around us?
Could we understand, together, how to cultivate you in ways that respect your natural growth, your roots, and your heritage. Can we work to repair the harm that has been done—restoring the environments that once nurtured you and adapting our cities and regions to be more welcoming? We need your partnership now, more than ever.
How do we build and rebuild, in ways that allow your presence in our cities and fields, that allow us to thrive alongside one another? How might we weave our metabolic health together to sustain our bodies and the common conditions for all life?
REFERENCES
De Oliveira, V. M. (2021). Hospicing modernity. North Atlantic Books.
Gesell, S. (1916/1958). The Natural Economic Order. London: Peter Owen, Ltd.
Lorimer, J. (2020). The probiotic planet: Using life to manage life. U of Minnesota Press.
Mol, A. (2021). Eating in theory. Duke University Press.
PART 6
About Right To Grow at COP16 Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible
If you eat, you’re in.
Maize Metabolics is a part of Right To Grow Let’s Plant The Future
A roundtable on the right to grow looking at how local food growing can benefit people and nature. This session will bring together policymakers, a global network of city leaders, grassroots organisers, growers, local councils, and businesses to discuss the right to grow and challenges, barriers and access to growing in cities. We’ll dig into the role of policy, people power, and cyber tools in future-proofing cities and growing pockets of nature in streets and neighbourhoods for people to find their own planet-fixing solutions.
Together we’ll be planting a new food future using metabolics, locally-led growing projects, and policymaking as examples for thinking about food systems and biodiversity differently. Building on the right to grow, we will go over the tools to scale mass mobilisation and bring nature (plus food) back to our cities from the ground up.
Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible and WORKOVERTIME
Be a part of a Global Learning Network on the Right To Grow and let’s bring nature (and food) to your city. JOIN HERE
Images 1, 2: Extracts from Maize Metabolics booklet
Iamges 3,4,5: Courtesy Science History Institute Museum & Library (public digital collections)
In Cali, Colombia, during the UN Biodiversity Conference, a metabolic procession called “Maize Metabolics” unfolded. It was a procession centered on the sacred history, cultural significance, and contemporary challenges of maize, or corn, as we move it through the world and it moves through us. Organized by Kalpana Arias and her organisation Nowadays, in partnership with Earthed and Incredible Edible, the event invited participants to reflect on maize through the dual lens of bodily and eco-industrial processes. As designed and scripted by Louise Carver and Jamie Allen (as WORKOVERTIME) it was an honoring of maize as both an ancient staple and a symbol of the resilience and the diversities of poly-cultures within and outwith the human body.
The processional began with a reflective introduction, explaining the concept of maize as a partner in metabolic processes—both within our bodies and across landscapes. Participants gathered around tables of corn-based products and traditional corn dishes, transforming the act of eating into a communal ritual. All were introduced to the idea that maize, a cereal that requires collaboration with our diverse gut flora for digestion, symbolizes a broader partnership: the movement for the right to grow—the right to cultivate urban biodiversity, to nurture the metabolism of cities, and to support the earth’s ecological health for people and nature. This reflection set the tone for eating and reading exercises, in which maize was explored as both a physical sustenance and a metaphor for communal resilience
After taking a bite of something "corn-y", and reading aloud from a prepared booklet, the digestive journey of maize was recounted. It began in the mouth, where teeth and enzymes like amylase start the process of breaking down starches before moving through the digestive system, relying on the partnership of gut flora to release nutrients. A section of the event drew inspiration from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. Participants reflected on her questions about metabolic literacies and the importance of gratitude—not just for what we take into our bodies, but for what we return to the earth. This plea for greater awareness of our digestive cycles adds sacredness to the act of eating and excreting, challenging participants to rethink their relationships with these often- and overly-overlooked processes.
Another aspect of the event focused on urban biodiversity and the parallels between cultivating diversity in our gut and in our environments. Drawing on the work of Silvio Gesell, the participants were invited to imagine the planet as a giant stomach, with the soil acting as an extension of their gut biome. This perspective highlighted the probiotic approach—a vibrant shift towards nurturing life in partnership with nature, as opposed to the extractive and reductive practices of industrial agriculture. Participants were encouraged to explore how they could build more probiotic cities, nurturing biodiversity both within and outside themselves.
The procession also included a reading of the Corn Mother Prayer—a collective expression of gratitude for maize, recognizing its role in sustaining human life and asking how we might care for it in return. This was a moment to reflect on how to cultivate maize in ways that respect its heritage and restore the environments it once thrived in, as a collaborative cultivation.
The event concluded with an invitation for participants to write their reflections and thoughts on a blank page in the prepared booklet—to consider how maize moves through their bodies, the gifts and energies it provides, and how they might envision a probiotic future for their cities. A closing discussion tied together the themes of seed sovereignty, urban growing, and biotic partnerships, emphasizing the interconnected nature of all metabolic processes and the importance of community-driven approaches to cultivating biodiversity.
Maize Metabolics was more than an exploration of maize as a food source—it was a call to action to reimagine our metabolic relationships, to liberate maize from industrial monocultures, and to liberate out guts from biomic ones. Through this procession, participants in Cali have left a mark—a vision for a more connected, probiotic way of living that honors the deep history of maize and embraces its potential for nourishing bodies, communities, and ecosystems alike.
PART 1
A metabolic procession of maize, inside and outside the body, reckons with its biological potential as sustenance, its cultural traditions, as well as the implications of industrial transformation. Maize monocultures, driven by profit, have disrupted local ecologies and cultural traditions, turning maize from a shared lifeforce into a controlled commodity. Can we reflect, together, on metabolic partnerships and on forms of freedom—between bodies and cities, economies and ecologies—in acts of liberation which move maize through the body as we move our bodies through the world?
PART 2
Eating maize directly, begins, most typically, in the mouth. Teeth crush the kernels, bringing enzymes like amylase in contact with starches, transforming them into simpler sugars. From here, the chewed corn moves down the oesophagus into the stomach, where acidic gastric juices and enzymes like pepsin begin digesting the proteins. But much of the corn remains intact.
The small intestine is where our internal biodiversity really thrives, mixing with bile from the liver, breaking down fats, while pancreatic enzymes continue the process of digestion. The intestinal walls are covered in villi and microvilli, harbouring a multitude of bacteria that break down nutrients. This microscopic community works together to extract glucose, amino acids, and minerals, absorbing them into the bloodstream and making them available for energy and nourishment.
In the large intestine, a further community of bacteria ferment fibres, releasing short-chain fatty acids, and gases. Water is absorbed, and what remains, forms the stool. The journey of maize through the individual body concludes here, transitioning toward the collective systems of metabolic waste handling—a reminder of how individual and communal processes are interlinked.
PART 3
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti offers insights on how to gradually part with our habits of living that harm ourselves, other human and nonhuman beings, and to the metabolic movements of the planet at large. She pleas for greater metabolic literacies and invokes prayers for our shit:
“We offer prayers for things that go into our bodies, but not for what comes out. Across cultures, we have practices of gratitude toward those responsible for bringing the food to our tables. Some cultures also pray for the food to give them health and strength to be in service of others. But, what would a prayer look like for what we return to the earth?”
“Who or what would you be grateful for? What could be a good prayer for your shit and the land that will receive it? Think beyond your own digestion. If everything is sacred, excretion should not be an exception. Take a moment to think about what your toilet socialisation has given you and deprived you of? The next time you need to go to the bathroom, pause for a while as things are brewing, and contemplate that part of you that will be released in a metabolic cycle that does not stop with the flush.”
PART 4
For the 19th Century economist and merchant Silvio Gesell, the whole planet was to be conceived as a giant stomach, pre-preparing photosynthetic energies and unpalatable matter so as to be absorbed into our digestive system, our bloodstreams, our organs and neural tissues. Imagine the biome of your gut as an extension of the soil.
Rewilding and the right to grow parallel contemporary interests in tending to our own bodily biodiversity for harmonised nutrition and health. All represent a vibrant shift toward probiotic approaches. This new imaginary for how we manage life and nurture health contrasts with the antibiotics of the 20th century and deadening forms of development. Imagine “probiotic” in its most expansive form: human interventions that harness life to tend to life itself, working with overflowing and abundant forms of evolutionary creativity, in partnership.
To think probiotically helps us move between scales, imagining the metabolic needs of our own cellular health, the ecosystem functions of landscapes, the biodiversity of our cities and the vast photosynthesising biological sinks of our planet regulating the Earth's atmosphere.
PART 5
To the maize, the mother, we express gratitude, for your role in sustaining us. We acknowledge the history we share. How can we best care for one another now? What practices would allow you to thrive, and to grow in balance with the world around us?
Could we understand, together, how to cultivate you in ways that respect your natural growth, your roots, and your heritage. Can we work to repair the harm that has been done—restoring the environments that once nurtured you and adapting our cities and regions to be more welcoming? We need your partnership now, more than ever.
How do we build and rebuild, in ways that allow your presence in our cities and fields, that allow us to thrive alongside one another? How might we weave our metabolic health together to sustain our bodies and the common conditions for all life?
REFERENCES
De Oliveira, V. M. (2021). Hospicing modernity. North Atlantic Books.
Gesell, S. (1916/1958). The Natural Economic Order. London: Peter Owen, Ltd.
Lorimer, J. (2020). The probiotic planet: Using life to manage life. U of Minnesota Press.
Mol, A. (2021). Eating in theory. Duke University Press.
PART 6
About Right To Grow at COP16 Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible
If you eat, you’re in.
Maize Metabolics is a part of Right To Grow Let’s Plant The Future
A roundtable on the right to grow looking at how local food growing can benefit people and nature. This session will bring together policymakers, a global network of city leaders, grassroots organisers, growers, local councils, and businesses to discuss the right to grow and challenges, barriers and access to growing in cities. We’ll dig into the role of policy, people power, and cyber tools in future-proofing cities and growing pockets of nature in streets and neighbourhoods for people to find their own planet-fixing solutions.
Together we’ll be planting a new food future using metabolics, locally-led growing projects, and policymaking as examples for thinking about food systems and biodiversity differently. Building on the right to grow, we will go over the tools to scale mass mobilisation and bring nature (plus food) back to our cities from the ground up.
Presented by Nowadays and Earthed in partnership with Incredible Edible and WORKOVERTIME
Be a part of a Global Learning Network on the Right To Grow and let’s bring nature (and food) to your city. JOIN HERE
Images 1, 2: Extracts from Maize Metabolics booklet
Iamges 3,4,5: Courtesy Science History Institute Museum & Library (public digital collections)
Kalpana Arias is a guerrilla gardener, technologist, urban greening activist and food grower, writer, speaker and the founder of Nowadays, a social enterprise fighting for urban nature. Alongside Nowadays, Kalpana campaigns for the right to grow and nature rights through urban gardening projects and tech policy reforms, has been researching technological ecologies for over 7 years, delivered a global TED talk, spoken at the United Nations, featured on Evening Standard's 30 under 30 list of Climate Activists On A Mission To Save London and Vogue, and is a trustee for GROW charity. Kalpana is currently an environmental consultant for corporations and governments and works with leading charities, institutions, brands and grassroots change-makers.
Jamie Allen is an artist-researcher, multimedia creator, ecological thinker, and the founder of projects that blend experimental art with community action. Alongside his work at the Critical Media Lab and metaLAB, Jamie collaborates on public-making, publishing, and ecological critique initiatives. He has contributed to international exhibitions, developed open research platforms, and written extensively on media materialism and infrastructural justice. His projects have been featured at venues like documenta14 and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and he regularly partners with global research institutions, grassroots groups, and arts organizations to catalyze new approaches to planetary and environmental care and relation.
Louise Carver is a human geographer and political ecologist tracing how knowledge, politics, technology and governance shape environment and society. Her work asks critical questions of value and valuation in the green and the newer frameworks of the blue economy. She combines insights from academic, policy and arts and design contexts to explore how new constellations of thought and practice might shift knowledge-governance onto new pathways. She is currently leading the programme on Convivial Conservation with TBA21 and is co-founder of the Convivial Conservation Centre at the University of Wageningen, Netherlands with colleagues in India, Brazil, South Africa and Tanzania.