From Studio to Seed

Developing your creative practice as a form of
Land Stewardship.

Beginning 15 July

£240

Book here

Monthly Sessions hosted by

Evgenia Emets

Evgenia is a visual artist and poet working at the intersection of ecology, language, and collective memory. Their practice explores how we relate to land through ritual, storytelling, and co-creation with place. Evgenia works across visual calligraphy, installations, films, artist books, and site-specific ecological artworks that engage directly with forests, seeds, soil, and the cyclical nature of time.

Since 2018, Evgenia’s central focus has been Eternal Forest - a long-term art and ecology project creating an interconnected network of forest sanctuaries to be protected for 1,000 years by local communities. It is both a conceptual framework and a grounded practice, evolving through research, land-based work, and creative collaboration with scientists, local and traditional knowledge holders, and forest ecosystems.
Evgenia approaches each place through the practice of deep listening - spending extended time walking, observing, and gathering stories of the land and people. This embodied research informs their studio process, where poetry and visual language merge into works that echo the rhythms of nature. In their calligraphic practice, text often dissolves into organic forms, revealing the interconnectedness of language and landscape.
Evgenia’s work invites reflection on alternative temporalities: forest time, deep time, and proposes art as a vessel for long-term ecological care. Evgenia seeks to create artworks that grow from the land, with the land, and speak back to it, through a process that is both poetic and site-responsive. They aim to create a new body of work rooted in this landscape, in dialogue with its stories, material presence, and more-than-human voices.

An Introduction

Historically, art has always been entangled with land: through ritual, agriculture, cosmology, commons, and later through landscape painting, land art, and site-specific practices. From the late 20th century onward, movements such as Land Art, eco-art, ecofeminist art, and socially engaged practice began to question extractive relationships to nature, authorship, and power, foregrounding care, embodiment, interdependence, and place-based knowledge.

At the same time, the ecological crisis has revealed the limits of symbolic gestures and short-term cultural production. Artists today are increasingly asked by themselves, by communities, and by land itself to move beyond representation toward participation, responsibility, and long-term presence.

This series responds to that shift. It explores how creative practice can become a form of landscape stewardship without becoming instrumental, didactic, or absorbed into purely technical problem-solving. Art is approached not as a solution-provider, but as a primary mode of sensing, relating, and learning how to care for and steward the living systems humans are part of.

This six-month series is designed as a shared field of practice rather than a traditional course. It offers artists an accessible yet grounded entry point into working with land, forests, and communities through regenerative and stewardship-based approaches.

The intention is not to teach visual art techniques, nor to provide rigid methodologies, but to cultivate orientation, responsibility, and confidence for artists who feel called to engage with land-based and ecological work in real-world contexts.

The series draws from Eternal Forest as a living, long-term project rooted in art, biodiversity, and community stewardship, supporting forest restoration and long-term stewardship, while remaining open and relevant to artists working in diverse places, scales, and disciplines.

The series is hosted by Evgenia Emets, artist and founder of Eternal Forest.

6 month series

£240

Book here

Series Themes

Entering Relationship: From Landscape to Living Partner

15 July, 6pm - 7.30pm UK
Focus:
Shifting from land as backdrop or material to land as collaborator
Listening, presence, and attention as artistic practices
Introduction to Eternal Forest as a long-term, relational project / examples of recent experiences
Outcome: Participants begin rooting from where they are, grounded in their own lived landscapes and relationships to place and imagining how they can start (if they have not started yet) to develop a relationship with the land in their practice towards a more reciprocal and even step beyond - regenerative approach.
Working with Complexity: Ecology, People, Institutions

12 August, 6pm - 7.30pm UK
Focus:
The realities of working with land beyond the studio
Stakeholders, responsibilities, and limitations
Navigating complexity without romanticising the work
Optional guest: A conservation partner or land steward collaborating with Eternal Forest
Outcome: Participants gain a realistic understanding of what land-based work entails in practice, how long it might take for such projects, who needs to be involved, what roles an artist might take to make this project a reality, what other people might come around to support.
Art as a Regenerative Agent

10 September, 6pm - 7.30pm UK
Focus:
Art as a bridge between ecology, culture, and care
Moving beyond eco-themed or symbolic gestures
Art as a long-term contributor to regeneration
Outcome: Participants reframe how artistic practice can meaningfully support restoration and stewardship.
Collaboration Models: Artists, Designers, Ecologists

21 October, 6pm - 7.30pm UK
Focus:
Working alongside permaculture designers, landscape architects, scientists, and communities
Power dynamics, translation between disciplines, and mutual respect
Retaining artistic integrity in collaborative settings
Guest: A regenerative designer or landscape architect actively collaborating with Eternal Forest
Outcome: Artists feel better equipped to enter interdisciplinary collaborations with clarity and confidence.
Community, Stewardship & Distributed Ownership

24 November, 6pm - 7.30pm UK
Focus:
Community as a full participant and co-steward rather than an audience
Letting go of authorship and control
Distributed, place-based continuity
Think-tank element: A real, unresolved question from Eternal Forest is shared and explored collectively
Outcome: Participants experience contribution and collective sense-making rather than passive learning.
Making Work That Lasts Beyond Us

16 December, 6pm - 7.30pm
Focus:
Deep time versus art-world cycles / limitations of short term funding
Legacy without ownership
Knowing when to step back / over to the commons
Closing reflection: Participants articulate a long-time intention rather than a project or outcome
Outcome: The series concludes with orientation toward patience, care, and long-term responsibility.