Flowers for social justice?

Over the coming twelve months I’m spending one evening a week at my local college, training to be a florist. Whilst I have no plans to make this into a career, I’m fascinated by how floristry - typically quite a genteel, unthreatening kind of hobby - might tie into my wider interests, especially around equity, community-building and activism. I’m wondering whether there might be opportunities to explore a practice of floristry that's explicitly connected to an anti-racist, feminist, queer politics, and if so, what that might look like. 

Rainbow wreath made as a fundraiser for Scotland's Equality Network - exactly the kind of project I want to making flowers for.

Here are a few thoughts-in-progress:

There is a language of flowers that we already understand

We know what it means to give someone a dozen roses in February, or to wear a red poppy in November, or to hang mistletoe over a doorframe in December. The Victorians had a whole language of flowers that imbued every bouquet with intricate and complex messages, but even without that, we are culturally familiar with using flowers to say thank you, to mourn a loss, to celebrate a wedding, birth or new home, and to mark the passing of the seasons. That brings with it opportunities, I think, to (re)consider who gets remembered, mourned, thanked, or celebrated.

Floristry is tied to international movement…

The commercial floristry industry is based on international trade. 90% of cut flowers sold in the UK are imported, shipped daily to the UK in refrigerated transport from Holland, Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya and Ethiopia. Buying flowers is entangled in the politics of fair trade, border politics, climate change and international trade agreements. Supermarkets sell flowers as ‘loss leaders’, and we’ve become used to flowers as cheap, mass-produced, standardised products or - at the other end of the scale, as a luxury high-end extravagance for weddings and special events. This all feels a long way away from flowers as a wild, naturally occurring and endlessly varied part of our natural ecosystem. I'd like to explore what it is to work with flowers more thoughtfully, in a way that recognises their origins, that celebrates worldwide connections and diversity, and that seeks to avoid (or at least reduce) the harm associated with their production.

….to nationalism and colonialism

The development of botanical collections, the study of plant life and the introduction of ‘exotic’ species to the UK is intrinsically tied up with the colonial project, and the quest for possession and classification as acts of power and control. These effects persist today, alongside more contemporary appropriations of our understandings - for example, of ‘native vs. invasive’ species and the ‘natural’ order of gender and sexuality. A few resources I’ve enjoyed in learning more about this are via Kew Gardens, the (brilliantly political) Crab Museum and the writings of Simone La Corbiniere, Amanda Thomson and Claire Ratinon. 

…and to protest!

I’ve been collecting photos of ways that flowers have been used in activism, protest and campaigning. This story, by a campaigner at a 1967 anti-Vietnam war rally at the Pentagon, is well worth a read.

For me, all this has implications for both the processes of floristry (reducing waste, working with local, seasonal flowers and sustainable materials) and the purpose of making arrangements (to contribute to social justice movements, or to re-think the cultural significance of remembrance, celebration and giving thanks). It’s about working thoughtfully, with curiosity and integrity, and about refusing to separate the beauty of working with flowers from their wider geopolitical significance.

I hope to be able to incorporate all of this into my learning over the coming year, and to seeing where these questions take me beyond that.  If you're exploring similar questions, or have learning, resources or connections to share, I'd love to hear from you.