Seedy Sunday

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Description

Adrian Smith and Andrew Stirling:

"Seedy Sunday is not a political campaigning organization, nor were the regulations the motive or intent for the initiative. Rather,on the first Sunday of every February in Brighton, volunteers host one of the largest and longest running seed swapping events in the UK. The first event was held in 2002, and inspired by a similar event in Vancouver.


As one of the founders, Andrea Goring, wrote for the program in Brighton,

  • “The [Canadian] event was about promoting and protecting biodiversity and one of the amazing

things was the social diversity, as people of different ages and class excitedly discussed what they had found or had to swap. As a result that year we only needed to buy two packets of seed for an abundant allotment full of diverse and delicious crops. In fact the day was so inspiring we decided to import the idea to England” (Seedy Sunday 2003 leaflet). The motivations for Seedy Sunday, then as now, were multiple: Promoting biodiversity by increasing it in the garden and on into the local food chain; Saving heritage crops from extinction; Connecting with local community food projects and allotments; Increasing local food security by involving more people in growing their own food; Take control of food production from the hands of the few in agribusiness and into the hands of the many.

This founding ethos, blending community, biodiversity, education, support, fun and activism has remained in Seedy Sunday as it has grown and developed. Everyone at Seedy Sunday is welcome to bring saved seeds to swap. There are workshops for people to learn how to save and store seeds from trickier plants too. Always there is lots of interest in local varieties and seeds with stories. Each Seedy Sunday event includes a program of speakers discussing topics consistent with the aims of the event. And there are stalls for organizations working on food, growing and environment issues to present their work and meet attendees.

As such, Seedy Sunday events attempt to welcome people into the wider issues through seed swapping. The events cater not just to the experienced gardener, but to the novice also. Attendance at Seedy Sunday has grown from around 300–400 at the first event, to over 2,500 now. BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time has broadcast from there to over a million listeners. Other events have spread independently around the UK, with some groups coming to Brighton to learn from them how to do it.

Social media helps spread the idea and lift swapping to a new plane. People can post information and films about their seed stories, map the details of their cultivation, and at the same time facilitate swaps at a larger-scale, and validate or rate the swappers. Even the open practices of peerto-peer production that pioneered free and open software are penetrating the world of seeds, with digital platforms helping innovations in open source seeds. Social media combines with physical gatherings to great effect; connecting hand-by-hand local tacit knowledge with a scale of activity that questions industrial trends towards concentration, enclosure and exclusion. The significance of initiatives like Seedy Sunday for innovation democracy should not be underestimated. Whilst many volunteers may balk at the idea of overturning industrial food systems, they are part of a sustainable food movement that opens up such systems to scrutiny." (https://grassrootsinnovations.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/smithstirling-2017-gi-id-journal-article.pdf)