Nature Connects: A Celebration of Nature & Our Shared Planet
This October, We Live Here is working with Medway Diversity Forum & Rochester Cathedral to create a communal celebration of diverse cultural experiences of nature. Though music and spoken word, this unique, atmospheric event will celebrate our personal, emotional, cultural and spiritual encounters with nature from the perspectives of different cultural traditions. The performance will be followed by a communal Harvest Feast, connecting the delicious produce grown in our local countryside and the wider range of culinary traditions that can be found within Medway’s communities.
Internationally acclaimed, Bethlehem-born Palestinian Nay virtuoso and percussionist Faris Ishaq reimagines the Nay (an instrument created from a single reed stem) as a self-sustained sonic landscape, drawing audiences into deep, reflective state and evoking deep experiences of the natural world.
Adrian Bawtree is a composer and musical director of Rochester Cathedral. He believes in the power of music to enrich lives, and as a professional musician, he has seen firsthand the impact music and other creative activities can have on improving wellbeing.
Karen Reeves Toppin is a classical and gospel singer, educator, community leader and the founder/director of Medway Can Sing. She is a passionate believer in the power of music to connect people and forge new communities.
Workshops Programme
In the lead-up to the intercultural harvest festival at Rochester Cathedral, leading artists and writers from Medway and across the UK will lad a programme of walks, creative workshops, shared meals and conversations. These offer opportunities for participants to share experiences, memories, stories and ideas about the natural world, and to create their own responses. As well as contributing to the content of the concert, these activities will lead to the creation of a new, large-scale textile artwork, made with local artists Cas Holmes and Paramjot Kaur.
Memories, Myths & Stories of Nature
A Weekend Workshop of Walks, Conversations, Stories & Food
Carol Donaldson is a writer of several books that focus on the natural world and our connections to it. She has written for Wanderlust, BBC Wildlife, The Telegraph and is a regular travel writer for the Guardian. She was BBC Wildlife’s Travel Writer of the Year in 2011. Carol has worked in wildlife conservation for 30 years and has been an independent Ecologist for 10 years.
Louisa Adjoa Parker is a writer of English-Ghanaian heritage who lives in South West England. Louisa’s poetry and prose has been widely published and she has written extensively on ethical diverse history, and is co-director of The Inclusion Agency. She is a sought-after speaker on rural racism, black history, mental health and marginalisation.
The Fabric of Nature
A Programme of Creative Workshops Exploring Nature & Cultural Heritage through Textiles
Cas Holmes is a British artists, author and tutor of Romani heritage, specialising in textile work with found material. She trained in fine art and is interested in interdisciplinary projects in community and gallery settings. Her practice centres on the use of sustainable materials and themes surrounding issues of identity and place. She has researched in traditional paper & textile crafts in Japan and India, which continue to inform her practice and writing.
As the founder of Sahara, an award-winning organisation for South Asian older people, Medway-based artist Paramjot Kaur developed deep expertise in leading initiatives that drive social inclusion. She works across media often working as a creative health practitioner. In 2025, she was awarded an Evolve Commission as part of Medway Council’s Creative Health Place Partnership Programme.
We Live Here
We Live Here develops, creates and presents public realm projects that build deeper connections between communities and the natural environments around them. Based in Medway, We Live Here works with local, national and international artists to create ambitious projects that are rooted in place, but which connect with people from around the world. We Live Here asks how the arts can serve as a catalyst for conversations between local communities, nationally and internationally, about the environmental challenged that face our planet and all of us who live on it. Working with diverse communities that often afce barriers to their enjoyment of both nature and the arts, We Live Here seeks out new ways of imagining, exploring and celebrating our shared and individual relationships with the natural world. We collaborate with artists, communities and other organisations that maintain, protect and increase our understanding of of the natural world.
Dr Tim Harrison, artistic director – We Live Here said: “I believe that everyone, irrespective of social & economic background, race, disability or gender should have access to the mental health benefits that I have found in nature if they want it. In communities across the UK and around the world, people find many different ways of exploring and articulating their rich and complex relationships with the natural world. At a point when Western approaches to nature are threatening the natural landscapes around us, the biodiversity of the planet and our own continued survival, we have much to learn as we reimagine new relationships between people and our planet, locally and globally.”
Medway Diversity Forum
Medway Diversity Forum aims to promote social inclusion for public benefit, by working with people in Medway and the surrounding areas, who are socially excluded on the grounds of being members of minority ethnic communities, relieving the needs of such people and assisting them to integrate into society, in particular by providing support to ethnic minority community and voluntary groups, promoting increased access to opportunities available to them from local authorities and service providers and reducing the barriers that these community face.
