The Village, the storm and the award

Migrating through inner and outer spaces. A reflection on my last 20 years, young Raymi and the teaching of nature.

Growing older brings new challenges but also new gifts.  It has been 20 years since the first tutoring afternoons with the local village’s pupils; since the  job at the zoo in Devon, with tarantulas and Madagascar hissing cockroaches. From Italian working-class kitchens to Siberian tigers’ enclosures, from Icelandic sport halls to London urban gardens. 

A student then a mother: across the different ways of being, I always believed that children and young people are the heart of the planet, that we are reborn everyday and that Nature is the guide showing us the way.

It has been 20 years of movements and places, of changes and journeys, of encounters and separations. However, something in all these migrations never changed: my purpose, the compasses (the scents of earth, moss, leaves, rain), my emptied pockets (ready to be re-filled over and over, ready to welcome new things).

With the power to heal and connect, I look at Nature as the supreme example of reciprocity. As I move through days, rhythms, commitments as a mum, partner, worker, Londoner, I remind myself that I am “a part”, “a small piece”, and that “I am-because-of-others”.

In my adventures through this city and its green spaces, I often ask myself: what do I pass on in this time here on the pale blue dot? What is that invisible stuff that works amongst the visible things we make and do with our hands? What’s my gift and, more importantly, what's my responsibility towards them?  (Robin Wall Kimmerer ). Questions arise when I walk. Long time ago I read something about ‘ psychogeography’ (A term associated with the Situationist International movement). Psychogeography involves exploring urban environments where walking becomes a tool to uncover hidden aspects of a city and, I think hidden aspects of ourselves in a fresh, unplanned manner.

With the sun on my face or the rain on my skin or the moon above, I migrate between inner and outer places. What do I serve with my existence? Memories nourish hopes. Is it a deeper sense of belonging to this living world that I want to pass on? A deeper understanding that we are part of a vast, interconnected magical mosaic—one that includes human, other-than-human, seasons, life and death, light and darkness, the unknown and the unexpected?

 Last December, I was honoured with “Best Practitioner of the Voluntary Sector” award for the Camden Youth Awards 2024.  I was happy but also felt incomplete. My mind twirled in the soil, in the learning of mycorrhizal; reached the birds in the sky seeking different climates. My mind dived in Pianura Padana's corn fields where, as children, we played hide-and-seek.

My hands weren’t the only hands receiving the award. I was there with a community of beings. The award was a celebration of the many beings who were beside me: from the last young person who joined the Generator Programme to the educators and dreamers I have met along the way, particularly Jade Branson, Rachel Solomon, Paul Richens, Emma Truman, Jane Riddiford, Malaika Bain-Peachey, Kathryn Oluyinka, Eugenie Abena Tete-Donkor, Laura Price, Roshni Nagaria, Maedeh Pourhamdany. 

My mind went back to my mother’s womb too in which I was with my twin sister Daniela. Life decided for me. I shared the first ever moment of growth with another being. As a cell I was “with”, shaped every week, growing with “other”. I am because of others. When the award was handed to me, it was a moment of gratitude to every being and every element that made me, including the seasons, the stars, the planets, dust, diatoms.

Through these years, I have always been Silvia Pedretti but I was never the same person. I changed with people, experiences, elements; with places, mistakes and successes. 

Looking back at last year, one of the most impactful collaborations for me was with the UCL Grant Museum of Zoology. Working with George Paris and their team, we were able to create experiences that introduced myself, young people and fellows to nature from a new angle. The Grant Museum runs programmes based on the cutting-edge research,  giving the chance for local communities to engage with new knowledge. The partnership helped helped find more reassurance for our eco-worrying minds.

We worked with Chickenshed, a multi-age and abilities project that uses theatre as a medium for storytelling around topics and issues that are central in the artivism movement. Dave Carey, Shiloh Maersk, Tom Langton and Keran Patel supported young people to express their relationship with nature and water, exploring environmental issues through personal stories and movement. Chickenshed had already impacted my life earlier in the year with the training on “Diversity, Inclusion and Unconscious Bias” and also, indirectly way before, back in 2002 when Jane Riddiford, co-founder of our charity, watched the Chickenshed show “Globaleyes”  and lit a spark that would be critical for Global Generation’s birth in 2004.

Many collaborative and participatory encounters infused me with new dreams.  Particularly with Maia Magoga, Tom Laming, Gus from Alveole, Haajar former Generator and now student at CSM, Jane Myatt and the Cards project, Raybel Charters in Sittingbourne, the wonderful space of Wilderness Wood and Samantha Brough from the community Voices Radio project.

But amongst the births of new projects and the arrival of new young people, my path (and the paths of many others) was shaped by loss, too. Loss of people, human contacts, nature. What is leadership when the world loses biodiversity, when society fails towards intersectionality, leaves spaces for injustices, and drives species to extinction? Can urban gardens support physical and spiritual recovery? Can a youth worker give hope, guidance and new nature-oriented-perspectives amongst the overwhelming power of social media in young people's lives?

Key questions keep emerging, reforming, calling. What is hope when something devastating happens?

Last year, on 28 July 2024, Raymi Willka Soldana Rojas passed away in a tragic  accident. Raymi was a Generator for a couple of years, then became a member of our first youth council (Youth Circle). He was a talented musician and, with his family, the Sagrada Familia UK, gave Global Generation the honour of filling the Story Garden with Andean music in one of our summer Solstice events. 

“Como miembro de Global Generation, una organización benéfica que crea jardines en colaboración con la comunidad local, trabajó para atraer la vida silvestre en King’s Cross colocando comederos para pájaros y ayudó a generar conciencia sobre el cambio climático”

As a Generator, Raymi helped planting up the very first GG parklets in the Euston area, reclaiming back a parking space for nature, and gave his smile to soil and worms, raising awareness of climate emergency amongst other young people. Raymi was a great listener, positive, creative, a person with hope and gentle thoughts. I was invited to speak at the funeral last September by his parents, Jeanette Phaxsi Rojas and Carlos Saldana. I had never been to the funeral of a young person before. I felt every word I wanted to say wouldn't be the right one. I felt that every word was just not enough. Couldn’t almost feel my body.  In that church, in white and colourful clothes, hundreds of people all around and a big picture of Raymi smiling at all of us. I spoke for a few minutes but I have a vague memory of it. I still have the paper with my handwritten notes.  I remember this weight on my chest, burning eyes, and the grey sky. But Raymi’s spirit is not a memory. Raymi is present through many things. Last December, Raymi was the winner of the ‘Positive Impact’ Award 2024” for his commitment towards Nature. 

Raymi, it wasn't you learning from me. It was me learning from you: learning to listen more, to wait, to be positive and different. Nature brought us together in the middle of a big city to fight together for our common home. The fight is still alive. 

When someone dies, something of us goes away with them; With people leaving, with fallen trees and species going extinct, something of us disappears.

But  something of them comes back too. The empty space created by Raymi’s departure was filled with renewed commitment, burning bright in the darkness. A wave of energy expands and travels from my feet through my arms and mind. I know I don't have all the horticultural knowledge of a professional gardener but I have my own way to experience nature and share that connection with others.  Every cell of me speaks and reminds me I need to work, believe and hope even harder.

We are in this flow of becoming, the learnings are in the cracks (Bayo Akomolafe), and there is good stuff in the murky waters, there is life in the boglands (Jane Riddiford) 

Our work on the edges, in the cracks amongst shiny buildings, in the messy spaces between set stones, it ‘s what the planet needs. 

Now that a new year has started, I know other rivers, mountains, and islands are there to be discovered. 

In this new Earth round,  I want to listen more to the years, the people, the challenges and successes of the past. I often think Global Generation is a village and not just a workplace, it is a refuge for discovery and silence, it is an ‘evolved nest’ (Darcia Narvaez) where teaching comes through connections in all directions and through time. In my understanding of the evolved nest work, there is a vertical and a horizontal dimension of the ‘nest’ needed to raise a child.  Human beings (families, school staff, youth workers) are not the only teachers. Teachers are the stars, the ancestors, the animals, the seasons and the past too.

With the wind of memories and nature behind my sails, I'll go on another trip, another spiral: Leaves that fall, compost that forms, new growth restarts again. 

It is January 2025, I am sitting in the Floating Garden’s classroom, the Regent's Canal’ iron whale. I am thankful to water. There is still so much to be done, so many more young people to reach and new partnerships to explore. I’m anxious for the future but I'll let myself go and be held by the village of the universe, the village of remembrance, resilience, patience, playing and creativity, the village of stories and poems, like the following one that Jeanette, Raymi’s mum, sent through as a response to my words above. 

When Great Trees Fall

Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.

When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.

Great souls die and

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance, fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of

dark, cold

caves.

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.

---

Notes from the Garden