In early September 2024, during the Art Walk Porty festival, we engaged with the public through conversations along Portobello’s beach promenade and at the festival hub on the high street. Over the two weekends, we gathered input on future projects, inviting festival visitors to share their thoughts and experiences on their food-growing practices, food-sourcing behaviours, and what their ideal garden space would look like. This anecdotal feedback focused on three potential future projects that AWP has in mind: using traffic control planters as community vegetable-growing spaces, creating a community garden on disused shorefront land, and establishing a pollination corridor through Portobello using spaces to plant insect and pollinator friendly plants.

To facilitate these conversations, we prepared guided questions and activities such as drawing and post it notes. We built a solar dehydrator to spark interest and illustrate alternative methods for food preservation. These elements helped start conversations with passers-by on reducing food waste and encouraged people to consider the alternate possibilities of using preserved foods in different ways.

From the conversations and interactions we had from across the festival three key themes seem to emerge. These were: Community and Sharing, Environmental Concerns and Alternative Growing Practices.

Community and Sharing

Community and sharing were a core theme that came across, many conversations emphasised the social benefits of gardening and food sharing. One lady shared that she only began to grow vegetables during the first COVID-19 lockdown to reduce visits to the shops and become more self-reliant. But was surprised when it also led her to connect with her neighbours, she had lived on the same street for many years, but it was only when she started to grow food did she start to talk and exchange growing tips and sharing excess food, from this others on the street began to do the same thing. The act of growing food in the first place was the reason for creating a sense of community which has continued past covid. This sentiment was echoed by a number of people through the course of the festival and showed the effect that growing and gardening has on a community beyond the obvious. 

Children participating in the drawing activities shared that gardening had become a popular hobby during lockdown, and has remained a valued activity with their parents even after restrictions have been lifted. This link between growing and community support appeared to deepen bonds, as families commented on the social benefits of exchanging produce and gardening tips. Many people also referenced Art Walk Porty’s apple tree-growing project (The Neighbouring Orchard), I was struck by the amount of people that either knew of where apples were growing or had an apple tree themselves which demonstrates the awareness of the project in the community. One man, who had adopted an apple tree, highlighted how initiatives like this encourage community involvement and increase interest in locally grown food. 

Another festival attendee who was a wheelchair user, attended a talk by Edinburgh Shoreline on the beach using a wheelchair from Beach Wheelchairs and was excited to try one out for the first time. She returned multiple times throughout the two weekends, enjoying taking part in the workshops like fabric painting with Sherry Wang and the closing meal at the end of the festival.

Environmental Concerns

The future project which had the most interest was for a garden and community growing space on the seafront of Portobello, many residents felt it would create an accessible, shared community resource that connects with Portobello’s coastal identity. As the coastline plays such a big part of the identity of the town there was enthusiasm for regenerating disused land that had become neglected into a space which had benefit to the public. Interest in this project came up more frequently in the conversations we had following Larissa Naylor’s talk on shoreline resilience and the potential for green spaces to serve as sustainable drainage and flood defences against rising sea levels.

The most prominent environmental concern many people had was focused on pollution and environmental safety. Several people expressed concern about the idea of using traffic barriers as planters for growing vegetables, noting that exposure to car emissions and street pollution might make produce unsafe for eating. Air pollution was a recurring topic, reflecting a heightened community awareness of environmental health risks of Portobello High Street, there was however strong support for using plants in the traffic barriers to help mitigate some of these issues and soften the hard landscaping around it them.

A particularly memorable conversation was with someone who initially had concerns about plastic waste and packaging and how this impacted on our health, although this wasn’t a core focus of the festival. Through participating in mycelium workshop, which explored using mycelium as a material which could be used for packaging we were able to address their concerns and shift the conversation from initial scepticism to an open discussion about alternative, sustainable products and food growing. By the end, she was not only won over by the workshop but also interested in future Art Walk Projects’ events.

Alternative Growing Practices

The final theme, alternative growing practices, emerged primarily through the workshops and conversations around the solar dehydrator. The dehydrator itself served as a conversation starter, with many people expressing fascination and surprise at how dehydrating could sustainably extend the life of food through passive means. People seemed encouraged through the discussions and began to think of innovative ways to grow and preserve food in the future and a few people were interested in building a solar dehydrator themselves.

Artist Sherry Wang’s workshops also prompted conversations about using plants for purposes beyond food consumption. Her use of natural dyes made from plants introduced the idea of a “dye garden,” composed of plants cultivated not for food but for material production. These conversations highlighted participants’ interest in alternative uses for plants, with many sharing examples of plants they grow for non-edible purposes. This led people to suggest that potentially the shoreline growing space project could incorporate a section for plants used for other purposes than just eating.   

Reflecting on the feedback and conversations over the two festival weekends, it became clear that the wild garden on the seafront and expanded growing spaces was what people were most interest in seeing being developed in Portobello, especially given the beach’s accessibility and ongoing environmental concerns. Another insight was the evident impact of other Art Walk projects, like the apple tree initiative, which is well known within the town even among those not directly involved or know about the project but are aware of the amount of apple trees which shows the success of these past projects and shows the potential impact of future projects. 

Workshops and hands-on activities proved a useful way of starting and opening up broader discussions.

Overall, these conversations highlighted the community’s enthusiasm around shared environmental and social concerns. The festival offered a platform for learning and idea-sharing. Going forward, incorporating more structured activities to capture nuanced insights would enhance documentation and further inform Art Walk Porty’s future projects.

Written by Thrift Project Curatorial Engagement Assistant, Murray Morrant

Thrift was supported by a ‘Healthy Planet, Healthy People’: Community-led Research Award, provided by the RSE with the support of the Williamson Trust, and a community micro-grant from The University of Edinburgh.

Next Steps?

Following on from the input received during the Thrift conversations we are currently in the process of assessing best ways to create a new coastal garden as a nature based solution for Porty’s coast. Working with ecologists and responding to the feedback received, ideas are being developed for a medicinal shoreline garden at Seafield. We hope to have more info available early in 2025 including ways to get involved.

Additionally, The Wild Food Map begun at the Art Walk Hub during the festival proved to be a really popular way to map our local wild foods growing across many uncultivated commonground areas. We plan to create this shortly as an online resource that people can add to, to map wild plants growing across all seasons.

If you’re interested in getting involved in our new coastal garden project please email us at info@artwalkporty.co.uk – we hope to shortly arrange a meeting to take this forward.

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Le May is leading a series of participatory tasting sessions, discussion events and workshops, underpinned by collaboration with local community groups as well as by the artist’s research into modern salt-production technologies and historic salt industries, including at Portobello, Joppa and Prestonpans. Each event aims to celebrate and interrogate the emotional resonance of food and invites participants to explore how flavour informs and is informed by culture, history and the environment. 

Le May’s work will culminate in a series of published recipes, including insights and local stories.

Mahala Le May is a Scottish artist, maker and baker who uses food as a tangible medium to ignite conversation, encouraging individuals and communities to question the complex- ities of contemporary food systems. Through conversations and collabo- rations with farmers, crop breeders, soil scientists and others, Le May is interested in thinking through how her work as a baker can support labour and land rights, soil health, biodiversity and seed sovereignty. 

Le May’s practice privileges process over outcome and participation over production. She uses historical research as a way to question established customs. 

Recent projects include field-to-loaf workshops on an organic farm and a wholegrain biscuit jamboree for participants to share food, skills and stories. Le May is currently researching local grain economies and their significance for both baking and weaving.

Site of Joppa Salt Pans

Commissioned Works & Events:

Exhibition
SALT Group Exhibition, Art Walk Hub, September 2022
Salt Works, mote102, 102 Ferry Road Edinburgh, March 2023

Events 2022
Salty snacks for Art Walk preview exploring salt and filtered sea water

Salt tasting sessions 
Site of Joppa Pans

Art, Food, Communities, Climate Justice
Le May leads an online discussion with Shona Cameron (CLIMAVORE project with Cooking Sections, Isle of Skye) and Rowan Lear (Glasgow Seed Library). 
Online discussion

Salt tasting & fermentation
Flavour and local food systems are at the centre of this artist-led afternoon of tastings and discussion 

Community engagement events
with Portobello Community Fridge and Craigmillar Pantry working with Grass Roots Remedies

Writing commissioned in partnership with MAP Magazine, published in SALT journal published by Art Walk Press 2023:

Tomatoes at Lunch Time with Salt a Line of Salt on Top on Mahala Le May by Glasgow food writer Sean Wai Keung – available to read on MAP

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