The School of Soil Futures is an online initiative co-organised by Struggles for Sovereignty (ID) and Arts Catalyst (UK) that brings together on Zoom, artists, ecological activists, community organisers, soil caretakers and others working on social and ecological justice from across the world. The School is part of Soil Futures, a network of creative organisations that explores the ground between us. The network is a collaboration between five organisations: Arts Catalyst (Sheffield, UK); RIWAQ (al Bireh, Palestine); Sakiya – Art/Science/Agriculture (Ein Qiniya, Palestine); Struggles for Sovereignty (Yogyakarta, Indonesia); and Vessel Art Project (Puglia, Italy).

During the talk, members of Struggles for Sovereignty Gatari Surya Kusuma and Sanne Oorthuizen and Arts Catalyst’s Curator Anna Santomauro will introduce the School of Soil Futures, a collaborative translocal initiative taking place online between March and May 2023. The School of Soil Futures sees soil as friend and kin, as a dynamic living being or network of beings, with whom we want to work in solidarity to better understand what ecologically just ways of inhabiting the earth there might be in diverse territories. Through the School we hope to nurture an exchange of situated practices among those who look after and care for soils. This will encompass a multiplicity of perspectives and relations: from the microbiological dimension to land-based practices, from acts of reparation and healing, to modes of resistance and storytelling.