Soils of Leicester - Voices from Urban Growers: Publication Launch & Networking Event

Soils of Leicester: Voices from Urban Growers

Publication Launch & Leicester Growers’ Gathering

You are warmly invited to celebrate Leicester’s Growing and Gardening community and join a wider conversation about how we can collectively organise, support, and sustain urban growing across the city.

The event is free and open to all. We especially welcome local growers and those curious about soil, care, food growing, and belonging — whether you have mud under your fingernails, academic questions, or both.

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About the Publication

Soils of Leicester: Voices from Urban Growers is a new publication from the project 'Ecological Belongings: Transforming Soil Cultures Through Science, Activism and the Arts', funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and led by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, at the University of Warwick.

This illustrated 24-page publication draws on interviews conducted by Dr Lucy Michaels with growers across more than 30 allotments, community gardens, and urban growing spaces in Leicester and its outskirts during 2021–2022. Bringing together lived experience and reflection, it centres voices often missing from conversations about belonging.

The publication also explores how belonging can develop through everyday practices of soil care, asking: what does it mean to garden with urban soils - soils shaped by centuries of disturbance, cultivation, and repair? And what might it mean to ecologically belong to these soils?

The publication also features hand-drawn illustrations from growing sites across Leicester by local artists. Free copies will be available at the event.

The launch will have contributions from:

•Professor Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, lead researcher for the Ecological Belongings project, reflecting on soil and matters of care in times of ecological crisis.

•Dr Lucy Michaels, Leicester-based researcher and writer of Soils of Leicester, sharing readings and reflections on the project.

•Samantha Woods, permaculture teacher, grower, long-standing supporter of Leicester’s growing communities, and consultant on the Ecological Belongings project, responding to the publication and its context.

The publication launch will be followed by time for networking and discussion about a new Growers’ Network for Leicester.

Please register so we have an idea of numbers for refreshments and publications.

We hope you can join us!

For more information about the Ecological Belongings project (2021-2023) see: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/research/projects/ecological-belongings/

Michaels, L. & Puig de la Bellacasa, M (2026) “It’s Only Really When I Put My Hands in the Soil That I Feel at Home”: Soil Care and Ecological Belonging in Urban Growing Practices. Environmental Humanities 18(1): 21–40 https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-12211120