Soil Assembly: Cultivating Ecologies of Learning
Soil Assembly is an emergent trans-local network dedicated to organizing assemblies for soil health literacy, bringing together local communities and diverse practitioners through experimental pedagogies at the intersection of art, science, ecology, and collective practice.
The network draws upon art and science open labs, artists’ farms, permaculture communities, non-formal education initiatives, and art and design schools to explore new forms of ecological learning rooted in creativity, situated knowledge, and environmental awareness. Responding to the ecological and social limits of conventional international conferences and large-scale cultural events, Soil Assembly favors a distributed model composed of regional in-person gatherings, an active online community, and hybrid international assemblies.
A Soil Assembly is both an event and a living laboratory embedded within the territory where it takes place. Each assembly approaches soil not only as a biological or agricultural resource, but as a cultural connector linking ecosystems, communities, food practices, histories, and ways of inhabiting the world. Soil becomes a living interface through which ecological, cultural, artistic, and social relationships can be collectively explored and reimagined.
Rooted in the principles of living pedagogies, Soil Assemblies create spaces for collective learning across art, ecology, agriculture, science, and community experience. They cultivate forms of learning grounded in direct engagement with land, cultivation, ecological observation, storytelling, collective making, mapping, and shared experimentation.
What is an Assembly? Why an Assembly? Who is the Assembly?
In a time marked by ecological crisis, social fragmentation, and growing threats to freedom of expression, the assembly has re-emerged as a vital format for gathering, solidarity, and collective imagination. Soil Assembly creates spaces where knowledge, practices, and experiences related to soil ecologies can circulate freely across disciplines, communities, and geographies.
This international network brings together artists, designers, curators, architects, educators, activists, farmers, hackers, scientists, writers, and community organizers to support the open exchange of knowledge, practices, and imaginaries related to soil, biodiversity, and regenerative futures.
Themes explored through Soil Assemblies include:
- soil health literacy
- regenerative rural economies
- regenerative soil practices
- living pedagogies
- agrobiodiversity
- multi-species custodianship
- mycelial thinking
- wetlands and watersheds
- transoceanic ecologies
- food systems & transports
- permacircularities
- planetary peasantry
- ecological futurism
Principles for Soil Assemblies
The purpose a SOIL ASSEMBLY is to:
LEVERAGE the power of art and design to create a living pedagogy that touches people’s hands, hearts and heads.
SEED a global network of creative collectives and artists, activists, designers, farmers, chefs, scientists and technicians who are critically committed to living soil, biodiversity and landscape conservation.
INFORM about formal and non-formal teaching methods for critical eco-competence, so that new generations can contribute to the collective regeneration of degraded landscapes.
PRESENT living laboratories, innovative projects and communities working at the interface of agroecology, the arts and citizen science.
Living Pedagogies
Living pedagogies are at the heart of Soil Assembly’s educational approach. Initiated in 2022 at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India, the project emerged as an experimental framework for rethinking how ecology, culture, and collective learning can come together through practice-based education.
Rooted in ecology, participation, and collective knowledge-making, living pedagogies propose learning as a dynamic relationship between people, places, and living systems. Rather than separating theory from practice, they emerge through direct engagement with land, soil, cultivation, biodiversity, and community experience.
This approach values multiple forms of knowledge equally — scientific research, artistic practice, farming traditions, embodied experience, citizen science, DIY experimentation, and local memory — creating collaborative and situated forms of ecological learning. Workshops, field visits, collective cultivation, soil observation, fermenting and composting practices, mapping, seed collection, storytelling, and low-tech experimentation all become pedagogical tools through which participants develop ecological awareness and regenerative forms of thinking.
For Soil Assembly, education is not confined to institutions or disciplinary boundaries. Living pedagogies encourage transdisciplinary exchange across art, science, agriculture, design, and activism, while fostering deeper forms of care, stewardship, and ecological responsibility. In this sense, learning is understood not only as the transmission of knowledge, but as the cultivation of new relationships between culture, territory, and the living world.
Soil as a Cultural Connector
Soil Assembly approaches soil not only as a biological or agricultural resource, but as a broader cultural connector linking ecosystems, communities, food practices, histories, and ways of inhabiting the world.
In this perspective, soil becomes a living interface between nature and culture — a space through which social, ecological, artistic, and political relationships can be understood and reimagined. By treating soil as both material and metaphor, Soil Assembly creates frameworks for collective learning, cross-disciplinary exchange, and regenerative forms of cultural practice rooted in care, interdependence, and territorial awareness.
Pedagogical Objectives
Soil Assembly’s pedagogical objectives include:
• fostering ecological and soil health literacy
• promoting regenerative and sustainable ways of living
• encouraging transdisciplinary learning between art, science, agriculture, and activism
• supporting place-based and experiential education
• reviving and transmitting local ecological knowledge and practices
• building awareness of the interdependence between soil, biodiversity, climate, food, and society
• cultivating collective stewardship, care, and ecological responsibility
• creating participatory and community-led learning environments
• encouraging cultural shifts from extractive to regenerative models
• strengthening networks of collaboration and knowledge-sharing across regions and disciplines
Communities and Audiences
Soil Assembly engages a wide range of communities and practitioners, including:
• farmers, growers and regenerative agriculture practitioners
• artists and cultural practitioners
• scientists and researchers
• educators, students, and universities
• environmental activists and NGOs
• local communities and grassroots organisations
• Indigenous communities and land stewards
• gardeners, seed keepers, custodian farmers, and food sovereignty networks
• designers, architects, landscape architects and urban planners
• writers, journalists, and community media
• hackers, makers, and DIY practitioners
• policymakers and ecological institutions
• youth and emerging ecological leaders
• practitioners in the fields of environmental, animal and human health
• interdisciplinary practitioners working across ecology, culture, and social justice
Citizen Science and DIY Practices
A strong citizen science and DIY dimension also runs through Soil Assembly’s methodology. Participants are encouraged to engage directly with ecological observation, soil testing, composting practices, seed collection, mapping, low-tech experimentation, and community-led forms of research and documentation.
By making ecological inquiry accessible and participatory, Soil Assembly promotes forms of knowledge production that are open, collective, and grounded in lived experience rather than restricted to institutional or expert frameworks.
Art, Design, and Ecological Education
Soil Assembly also seeks to influence the fields of art, design, architecture, and cultural education by positioning ecological literacy as a foundational dimension of creative practice.
Its approach challenges traditional models of art and design education through field-based learning, permacultural approaches, collaboration with scientists and communities, regenerative design thinking, and attention to material cycles, territory, biodiversity, and ecological interdependence.
Rather than treating ecology as a separate discipline, Soil Assembly proposes that ecological thinking should become embedded within creative education itself. Through workshops, residencies, collaborative studios, field laboratories, immersive intensives in learning farms and territories, and institutional partnerships, the network contributes to the emergence of new pedagogical models connecting cultural practice, environmental responsibility, and regenerative futures.
Permacircularities & Social Fermentation
Permacircularities and social fermentation explore how regenerative ecosystems can emerge through collective practice, shared resources, and long-term cultural transformation. Rooted in permaculture, circular economies, slow food and transport, and community-led experimentation, they foster forms of ecological and social resilience based on reciprocity, care, and interdependence. Within Soil Assembly, these processes unfold through collaborative learning, fermenting and composting practices, food systems, low-tech experimentation, artistic exchange, and situated forms of making that allow ideas, relationships, and communities to slowly ferment and evolve across territories.