Cara & Hat: A Nurturing Queer Nature Collective

Photo credit: Mister Obat

Can you introduce yourself and your role at the QRC? 

Hello!! I am Hat (they/them), one of the co-founders of Queer Roots Collective, I do our designs and graphics and look after our communications. Having a background in environmentalism, I am passionate about creating resilient communities that work towards collective care for ourselves, our community and our environment. Queer Roots Collective has already created such an incredible, diverse and empowering community of solidarity that I’m hugely proud to be a part of.

Hi there! My name is Cara and I’m one of the co-founders of the Collective. I produce and programme our events and projects and am always on the lookout for potential collaborations and projects. Listening to the community and responding to their needs is key to how we go about things. Space making has always been pivotal in my art practice, my education, and my career. I believe that safe spaces are paramount to encourage growth, rest, community, and resilience. I believe that by holding space and events that meet their needs, we can support, inspire, and empower people through harbouring a belief in community and solidarity.

Where did the idea to start Queer Roots Collective come from?

The Collective sprouted in 2022 during the weekend before Corporate Pride in Manchester. A group of us had a conversation at Platt Field Market Garden where it soon became apparent that we were all planning on leaving Manchester during Pride. The conversations kept pace over the next few weeks and soon we had explored the reasons why we felt the need to give Pride a miss and what we would like to see instead. It was established that for many of us, it was that we did not feel represented by what Pride had to offer and that it did not provide what we needed to feel seen or safe.

Having started in the Market Garden, we were a group of outdoorsy types who felt most at home amongst the plants, worms, and compost. We wanted to see more outdoor events, more sober events, and more intergenerational and family spaces. It was one of those rare moments when you have a group who all have the drive, the skill, and the capacity to get something going.

Since then the Collective has come a long way! Queer Out Here led us on an amazing Urban Ramble through Manchester’s green spaces and the amazing MUD Kitchen filled our hearts and bellies with a delicious feast, we held a sober ceilidh with thanks to the amazing Chimera Ceilidh band, we run a bi-weekly folk session on Canal Street, we deliver lino print and zine workshops, we host a weekly Queer Gardening Club for Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD) CIC, and we are working with Conversation Over Boarders to host a weekly wellbeing session for displaced communities who identify as queer. Oh, and we are hosting our second Alternative Pride Festival this weekend amongst the plants, worms, and compost at Platt Field Market Garden where it all began!

How does the organisation run?

The Collective is entirely volunteer run and led! We are a relatively small group that is ever changing and as a loose rule we move towards the projects that enough people have desire and capacity to create. In the future, I would love to be able to figure out a way to allow the Collective to pay for people’s time, skills, and energy they contribute to the Collective – at the moment we are lucky to have a group of people who are able to give their time for free, but I don’t feel like this model is resilient enough to allow the Collective to be as Regenerative as we aim for, and it also limits those who are able to get involved on an organising level. But for now, it’s working. My plan for after the festival this weekend is to get stuck into some research and learn what I can about how to help the Collective grow in strength and numbers.

What does the Queer Roots Collective entail?

The Queer Roots Collective involves a group of friends coming together around a shared desire to create the spaces we see and are told by our community that are needed. We meet at different rhythms through the year and are looking forward to a slowing down post Alternative Pride Festival as we lean into Autumn.

We are a part of Manchester’s rich and radical tapestry of grass-roots, community organisers. Many of our projects happen with the brilliant support of Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD) CIC. Our festival is at their Platt Fields Market Garden in Fallowfield, and we host their Queer Gardening Club at Forever Fields in Whalley Range. We have done events in many places across Manchester and are keen to collaborate with similar groups and collectives further afield.

Our activities focus on nature connection, wellbeing, and creating spaces where we can intentionally create radical community care with ourselves, each other, and the planet. Our events are for anyone who needs them; anyone who does not feel seen in what Corporate Pride has to offer. (as long as you’re not a meany and agree to our community code of care!) 

Why is it important to create outdoor spaces?

We are strong believers that access to nature makes us happier, braver, and more resilient. We believe that having a connection with nature can teach us a whole lot about how to care for ourselves, each other, and the planet.

For a lot of us we find that nature authenticates our queerness and pushes against the capitalist and colonial ideas of competition and dominion that the system tries to convince us of. Natures systems don’t derive from the idea of competition, but rather it exists by creating balanced and fair ecosystems. We encourage a culture of collective care and community resilience within the organising of our group and in the wider community.

We are constantly re-evaluating what the needs of our community are and how we can deliver that in a healthy and meaningful way as described in our constitution.

What are some of the benefits of getting involved in QRC as a queer person?

Queer Roots Collective acknowledges a demand in Manchester for spaces that are less centred around the ‘mainstream’ queer culture of drinking, partying to pop music, drug taking under a glittery rainbow Barclays banner, using our subculture to pinkwash against environmental and humanitarian crimes that they fund. Whilst queer night life is still important and there is an amazing grassroots scene in Manchester that a lot of the QRC team enjoy, we want to hold space for the activist, environmentalist, communal and restorative aspects of queer culture.

We wanted to make an environment/space that doesn’t revolve around capitalist exchange and provides a physical space for the radical queer ideas and culture to germinate, evolve and flourish. We aim to make QRC events as inclusive as possible by giving people the platform to make their ideas happen but also constantly progressing our accessibility from making sober events, having quiet spaces at all our events, creating in depth accessibility guides for our venues to where possible offering sliding scale and free community ticket prices for our events.

What are some of the barriers queer people might face joining a non-queer environmental group?

There is an engrained toxic culture within many environmentalist organisations. In my experience (Hat) of environmentalist spaces, particularly of direct-action groups, is often there is an engrained pressure of being the ‘best activist’. Pressures to be arrested and have complete dedication to the ‘cause’ are dominant but often come from those are in more privileged positions i.e. those in a financial position to get arrested, or those who are persecuted less harshly by the legal system. These spaces are often dominated by white, cisgendered men and therefore there is an absence of voices at the table with lived experience of being a queer person. Burnout culture is rife within many environmental groups, and having to do the work of the group you are organising with as well as the ‘work’ of existing in a non-queer space has often accelerated the road to burn out for many people.

What tips do you have for people looking to start a queer nature collective like QRC in their own town or city?

We very much follow the philosophy of ‘shy barns get nowt!’… in other words, ‘don’t ask, don’t get’! This had led us to nurture several brilliant opportunities and connections within our Manchester queer scene and beyond. Our first event was in conjunction with Queer Out Here, a local queer walking group, and Patagonia Manchester, with whom we hosted a queer urban ramble from Manchester city centre to our gorgeous market garden.

We are lucky to be so closely associated with Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD) CIC so we are in the fortunate position where we have the physical space to host our events which is often the first barrier to these sorts of groups forming. From there it is our core aim of bringing people together for a collective cause in line with our ethos as a group. This can start with having a cuppa tea to hosting a 2-day festival.

From what started as a bunch of queers gathering in a market garden, we now have an annual Alternative Pride Festival that holds space for over 700 of our community, a fortnightly queer folk session, weekly queer gardening clubs and the odd sober ceilidh!

What is the Alt Pride Festival all about?

Pride originated from the Stonewall Riots in New York in 1969, advocating for LGBTQ+ rights. In more recent years it has been co-opted by the capitalist agenda with companies and organisation using it to tap into the pink pound. Thus, the radical agenda of pride has been neutralised to make it more palatable for the mainstream media. Our event is in celebration in the belief that pride was and always should be a protest or a space for radical ideas, but also designed for the community that it serves. We have responded to calls for more sober queer spaces, as a result we make the Sunday an alcohol-free day.

This is our second year of Queer Roots Alternative Pride at Platt Fields Market Garden in Fallowfield, Manchester. It is a space for anyone who needs it, who do not feel seen or satisfied by the more capitalist pride. The programming of the event has brought together numerous grassroots organisations from Manchester and beyond that push the radical queer agenda or fall within that spectrum, from talks from Right to Roam, consent workshops, gardening, queer life drawing, trans sharing circles and loads more. Our full programme is found on our website! We also are bringing in queer food vendors throughout the weekend and serving Queer Brewing Project on our boozy Saturday.

Hat Collins & Cara Powell, co-founders of QRC