ABOUT WE FEED THE UK
Worm charmers, wildflower whisperers, carbon capturers, insect allies: regenerative farmers and fishers are working with nature in a time-honoured team.
Across a country that is 71% farmland, where less than half of our biodiversity remains, restorative practices are the root to future resilience. The time is ripe to celebrate these efforts, in support of the regenerative agriculture transition.
We Feed The UK is a major arts project pairing critically acclaimed photographers and poets with regenerative farmers, urban growers, sustainable fishers and grain rebels: the UK’s custodians of land, soil, sea and seed.
HOW IT WORKS
TEN GROUND-BREAKING POSITIVE STORIES
EXHIBITED AT INSPIRING REGIONAL EVENTS
MAKING REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE THE NORM
Grown by The Gaia Foundation with collaborators across the country, We Feed The UK brings together over 40 partners from the environment and arts sectors to tell ten time-critical stories across urban, rural and coastal areas; ranging from multi-generational, Black-led growing projects in London to a majority-women workers cooperative in Edinburgh via sustainable fishing along the south coast.
Through these tales planting the seeds of change, We Feed The UK is laying the groundwork for a just, safe, and liveable tomorrow. So far, our message has reached over 53 million people on their pathway from consumer to custodian.
The campaign is a message of hope, showcasing grassroots solutions to climate change, the biodiversity crisis and social justice.
The project follows The Gaia Foundation’s We Feed The World exhibition and book. This global collaboration with some of the best-loved photographers of our time celebrates smallholder farmers across the globe to bust the myth that we need industrial farming to survive.
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TEN STORIES OF REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE
We Feed The UK is kicking off with ten ground-breaking collaborations shared online and in person between February 2024 and June 2025:
- February 2024 | Agri-culture: A Lineage of Hedgerow Ligging in Cumbria | Inspired by Strickley Farm | Poetry by Testament | Photography by Johannes Pretorius | Exhibited at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool
Our opening exhibition was hailed as a huge success by Open Eye Gallery, reaching an estimated 25,000 visitors.
– - April 2024 | Cultivating Equality: Women Working with Land in Scotland | Inspired by Grampian Graziers and Lauriston Farm | Poetry by Iona Lee | Photography by Sophie Gerrard | Exhibited at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow
Originally planned to run for one month, the gallery was so delighted with the buzz the exhibition generated that its stay was extended until 21st July, resulting in a huge increase in footfall and it becoming part of the Glasgow International Art Festival.
– - May 2024 | No Diggity: Cooling our Climate in the Black Country | Inspired by No Diggity Gardens | Poetry by Bohdan Piasecki | Photography by Ayesha Jones | Exhibited with Multistory
Over 500 local people attended the exhibition’s opening weekend, which featured a host of activities and site tours for attendees.
– - June 2024 | Custodians of the Land: Intergenerational Restoration in Wales | Inspired by The Penpont Project | Poetry by Ifor Ap Glyn | Photography by Andy Pilsbury | Exhibited with Action for Conservation at Penpont Estate
On a warm June solstice evening, the Gaia team gathered together with 100 invitees at Penpont House and grounds to launch our Wales story, which is re-exhibiting in autumn 2024.
– - September 2024 | From Crisis to Kinship: Healing People and Place on England’s First Community-Owned Farm | Inspired by Fordhall Organic Farm | Poetry by Jasmine Gardosi | Photography by Aaron Schuman | Published with GRAIN Projects as an immersive book
– - October 2024 | Food Justice: Served Fresh from Community Farms in London | Inspired by Go Grow With Love and Black Rootz | Poetry by Zena Edwards | Photography by Arpita Shah | Exhibited with Photo Fringe in London and Brighton
– - November 2024 | Unearthed: Restoring Soil in Northumberland | Inspired by Wharmley Farm | Poetry by Kate Fox | Photography by Johannah Churchill | Exhibited with North East Photography Network at The Sill
– - January 2025 | Fibre: Nature-Friendly Flax Farming in Ireland | Inspired by Mallon Farm | Poetry by Abby Oliveira | Photography by Yvette Monahan | Exhibited at Belfast Exposed
– - April 2025 | Fishing: In Deep Water Off Cornwall and the Scilly Isles | Poetry by Chris Redmond | Photography by Jon Tonks | Exhibited at Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol
– - April 2025 | Grain Rebels: A Food Revolution Starts with Seed in the Southwest | Inspired by Gothelney Farm and Field Bakery, part of the South West Grain Network | Poetry by Dizraeli | Photography by Lúa Ribeira | Exhibited at The Royal Photographic Society in Bristol
PLUS: 2024 – 2026 | Pop-Up Portraits: Our travelling exhibition showcasing and celebrating the diverse, inspiring, and radically-minded grassroots agroecology movement | Photography by Louis Little | Exhibited up and down the country
So far the portraits have travelled to Oxford Real Farming Conference, Rheged Cumbria, Yeo Valley, FarmED, Waddesdon Manor, Groundswell, Be The Earth Festival, Go Falkland and WOMAD with a combined audience of 64,000 people.
Click a pin to discover the seeds of change being sown near you.
40 COLLABORATORS SUPPORTING REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE
Ten acclaimed photographers are nurturing close relationships with their subjects, shooting throughout the seasons. Their work, exhibited online and nationwide with ten arts partners, ranges from experiments with bread by Magnum’s Lúa Ribeira, to a 12-month study on sustainable fishing by photographer Jon Tonks.
Spoken word artists, from award-winning organisation Hot Poets, have crafted a collection of ten poems in a diversity of languages and regional dialects. This includes a celebration of hedgerows by beatboxing champion Testament, grain rebels by legendary poet-singer Dizraeli, and the soil by BBC Radio 4’s Kate Fox.
The collaborations between photographers and poets are being shared in partnership with ten arts organisations between February 2024-May 2025, supported by evidence from ten environmental allies who are leading the regenerative agriculture movement.
WHY WE FEED THE UK MATTERS
Our food forms us. How we produce it can shape society: offering positive solutions to intertwined crises.
Farming and fishing can be at the heart of nature recovery in an age of biodiversity collapse. Regenerative agricultural practices can bring communities together even as we’re forced apart. And working with, not against, our earth promises resilience to unpredictable change while floods deepen and temperatures rise.
We Feed The UK will grow support for the practices that can heal people and planet, through a radical re-storying of regenerative farmers as custodians of biocultural diversity across our isles.
This celebration of regenerative agriculture, through innovative, diverse cross-sector collaboration will reach new audiences, challenge perceptions, and inspire support for a country-wide transition towards this approach.
“All great changemaking is rooted in dreaming and storytelling.”
Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Town movement
OUR IMPACT ON THE FUTURE OF FOOD AND FARMING
Since the We Feed The UK launch in Liverpool in February 2024, we have been rolling out the first phase of national exhibitions, pop-up portrait exhibitions, events and performances at pace.
Exhibitions across the UK have reached a range of urban and rural audiences, amassing an estimated visitor count so far of over 45,000. Through events, press features, and partnerships, we have told our story to over 53 million people and counting.
From changing the way people think about food, to inspiring a growing number of community gardens, to helping farming organisations accelerate the transition to regenerative agricultural practices, we are already witnessing the power of storytelling to rewrite our shared future.
“The work that The Gaia Foundation’s We Feed The UK project and the Hot Poets have done in translating the day to day actions of farmers into poetry has connected us with new audiences in impactful ways. Many of us, including myself, have been deeply moved by how the stories of our farms are turned into words for all to understand what we do and why we do it. This has helped us as farmers and as an organisation to relay our messages and actions to a wider audience, giving us further impact and enabling us to deliver better actions for
Martin Lines, Director of the Nature Friendly Farming Network
farming, nature, food, and climate.”
ABOUT THE GAIA FOUNDATION
The Gaia Foundation has been working with regenerative, holistic approaches to reviving biocultural diversity for almost forty years.
Established in the 1980s as a response to Indigenous peoples’ displacement from forests in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon, Gaia has become a well-respected voice of experience working on issues ranging from land rights to restoring regenerative pathways, from the Amazon to Africa.
Through our dedicated Seed Sovereignty UK and Ireland Programme, which has eight team members working regionally, we have become firmly embedded, with our hands in the soil, across the UK’s food sovereignty movement.