Mafwa Theatre's story
Lincoln Greeners is a community gardening group, run by Leeds-based Community Interest Company (CIC) Mafwa Theatre. The group is led by qualified RHS gardener, Matilya, who has spent most of her waking moments in the last 5 years tending to and communing with plants. At the heart of her practice is helping people reconnect with their immediate surroundings, creating green spaces in difficult places and using gardening as a vessel to connect with self, ancestors and other human and non-human beings.
The group is inclusive and welcoming of all people, and the CIC provides support for people on lower incomes to attend by providing help with transport costs.
The group decides together what they would like to grow, and members will follow the whole growing process from starting seedlings to harvest. They also learn how to maintain and care for plants and share knowledge and skills; as well as socialising, drinking herbal teas and enjoying the beautiful co-created green space!
The group is just one of the offerings for people provided by Mafwa Theatre. The charity, based in Mabgate, Central Leeds, uses drama and the arts to create work celebrating similarities and differences, bringing people together and speaking truth to power. They use this platform to highlight and enable development opportunities for artists and theatre makers from migrant backgrounds, advocate for migrant rights and celebrate diverse communities.
The CIC works together with community and creative partners so that what they do is effective and accountable, and they advocate with and on behalf of migrant voices, working with pro-migrant, pro-refugee advocacy groups as well as advocating for issues that affect these communities.
Useful learnings from Mafwa Theatre
- Experiment! When the group started, the participants weren’t sure what they would be able to grow as they were unsure about the soil quality, but they have been pleasantly surprised, even successfully growing things like sweet potatoes!
- Food is an incredible social tool: many of the participants in the group are very socially isolated and may not interact with many or any other people throughout the week. Having this open group – which welcomes anyone regardless of background – and is centred around growing and harvesting healthy food, has a really positive impact on participants’ wellbeing and has helped to create lasting friendships.
- For someone who wants to start gardening, looking at the natural environment around you is always a good place to start. Observe what plants in the wild are doing, look at where they grow, how quickly they form flowers and what their seed pods look like. We can learn a lot by just listening to nature!
Mafwa Theatre's metrics
- Number of participants
- Amount of food harvested
