ON THIS DAY OF ALMOST EQUAL DAY AND NIGHT, JOIN US TO FIND YOUR SPRING BALANCE.
At the garden; meet gardeners, cooks & artists, sow seeds, have a gentle stretch, help build a moveable altar, set spring intentions and enjoy wild garlic & nettle soup around the fire.
The spring equinox is also known as Ostara, from the Anglo-Saxon Ostara/Eostre, the goddess of spring. She is the divine maiden that brings forth the first light of springtime after the winter. Come and listen to stories of Ostara & spring folklore, and bring yours to share.
Poster by Corbin LaMont / Alternative Infrastructure. Photos by Jude MacLochlainn & Jon Barraclough
WINTER SOLSTICE
Friday 22nd December
Join us on Windsor Street on the shortest day for calm, fire and community.
SOLSTICE ALTAR 8am-4pm FRONT ROOM
Gather around the Solstice Altar to reflect on the year with rituals, readings, drawing, conversations, and rest. With L8 pop-up apothecary. And maybe an early fire on the street, you never know…
SOLSTICE WINTER GARDEN 12-2pmGARDEN
Celebrate the garden in winter and welcome in the longer days with music & food around the Solstice fire!
SOLSTICE WINTER WARMER 5-8pm SQUASH
Come along for this cosy evening of seasonal cheer, festive songs from Hope Street Harmonies choir, mulled apple punch round the fire and a chance to do a bit of ethical, tasty Christmas shopping!
The cafe will be open 8am-8pm (except 4-5pm) for delicious solstice breakfast, soup & supper.
SAMHAIN
WEDNESDAY 1ST NOVEMBER
SAMHAIN CELEBRATION 12-2 IN THE GARDEN
Celebrate Samhain; the end and beginning of the Celtic New Year, with food, music & rituals in community in the Grapes Community Food Garden. Bring something for the altar and something to burn.
SAMHAIN SALON 5-7PM AT SQUASH
Join us for a warming social and join in conversations reflecting on this important time of beginnings & endings around the Samhain fire. Book via becky@squashliverpool.co.uk
11AM – 3PM SATURDAY 28TH & SUNDAY 29TH OCTOBER & 12-4 PM WEDNESDAY 1ST NOVEMBER (SAMHAIN)
You are welcome to this nurturing space and exhibition that weaves together 8-fold land-based rituals, creative processes and practices rooted in the Squash community of gardeners, cooks & artists. At this annual point of endings and beginnings in the Celtic tradition, Autumn Alchemy celebrates what has been planted, grown, gathered, crafted & discovered over the seasonal cycles of sharing life together, on Windsor Street.
Autumn Alchemy is a collaboration with artist Angelica Vanasse who from the autumn of 2022 has worked with community gardeners to develop and deepen creative, nature-based, ritual practices in Squash’s community garden. The exhibition builds on this playful series of art-making sessions that explored human identity and our place in urban nature.
This site-specific installation will evolve through activation, with the contributing artists responding to the space through their own creative processes. It is also a contemplative space of welcome, creativity, wellbeing and participation; Alchemy in Action.
Alchemy in Action will be taking place throughout the exhibition opening hours and will take different forms. This will include artists exploring through drawing, painting with natural inks & working with fire, plants & the weather. Come along to witness and take part in this unfolding creative gathering.
When you visit you can get involved in conversations, tastings, intention-setting and connecting with ancestors as we honour the end of the 8-Fold Year and welcome in Samhain, the darker, more wintery half of the year. This is a calm place for stillness, reflection & nurture of the self, within community.
At Squash we embrace the 8-fold year; a celebration of the Earth’s yearly cycle of change – life, death, growth and transformation. We have annually celebrated the 8-fold year as an activating force & reflective tool supporting the evolution of our 100-Year plan since its inception in 2010, through marking the Quarter points – Winter and Summer Solstices & Spring and Autumn Equinoxes and the Cross Quarter Points that fall at seasonal peaks (the Four Great Fire Festivals) of Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. These 8 chapters create the Wheel of the Year that connects us to the continuous cycles and changes in nature and ourselves.
CREATIVE LEADS:
ANGELICA VANASSE – LEAD ARTIST / CREATIVE PRODUCER
JACKIE SWANSON – HORTICULTURAL LEAD / CREATIVE PRODUCER
JASON HUGHES – HORTICULTURAL TEAM / CREATIVE PRACTITIONER
With the Grapes Community Gardeners & SQUASH TEAM
‘The old Celtic festivals fall at eight points during the year, and are a means by which we can connect to the Earth’s passing seasons and acknowledge the way this resonates within ourselves, as part of the natural world.’ – Glennie Kindred, Sacred Earth Celebration
AUTUMN EQUINOX WEEKENDER
22ND-24TH SEPTEMBER
JOIN IN OUR ANNUAL CELEBRATIONS ON AND AROUND THIS GENTLE TIME OF BALANCE, HARVEST & REFLECTION
HARVEST AUCTION FRIDAY 22ND 6-9PM
Join in our annual harvest auction where great Liverpool-grown fruit & veg and homemade treats will be up for grabs! Come along for a magical eve of comedy & fun, and help raise funds for great local good causes: More info here. Free/ Suggested donation £3.75
AUTUMN EQUINOX DISCO FEAST Saturday 23rd 11am-3pm
On this Autumn Equinox day, come and find your equinox balance! Join in by dancing while cooking up a big feast to share! Add your autumn offering to the altar, sip a fresh herbal tea, and enjoy a gentle chat around the fire. Come to cook from 11am-1pm.Feast from 2pm Book your free spot via clare@squashliverpool.co.uk
SEED-SAVE SUNDAY 24TH 10AM-1PM
Learn about the important work of seed saving by joining in our annual Seed Save – a key part of the food growing cycle – saving seeds from food crops grown this year to sow next year. Join Squash gardeners to sort, clean & pack seeds to replenish the Toxteth Seed Library, established 10 years ago to keep a vital seed store & exchange alive in L8. Drop by and say hi or stay for a while and help in this gentle process.
EQUINOX FERMENT MAKING SESSION Sunday 24th 1.30-4pm
Join Squash cooks to make seasonal ferments & preserves using vegetables that would otherwise go to waste. Booking essential via clare@squashliverpool.co.uk Suggested donation £10/£6. Some free spaces for Squash members/L8 residents who’re currently unemployed/on low incomes
LUGHNASADH FIRE & FIRST GRAIN HARVEST CELEBRATION
FRIDAY 4TH AUGUST 12 NOON – 2PM
GRAPES COMMUNITY FOOD GARDEN & FRONT ROOM AT SQUASH
Come celebrate Lughnasadh / Lammas; the Gaelic fire festival marking the first harvest. We’ll be picking the wheat we planted in spring, making dough to cook in the earth oven and breaking bread together in the Grapes Community Food Garden.Join us for music, chats round the fire and delicious tastes from the garden. Bring your own harvest offerings for the Lughnasadh altar and your own rituals of the season to share.
Also, gather around the Solidarity Tablecloth, sewn by many stitchers lead by artist Tabitha Moses on view for the first time, culminating our Solidarity Banquets project for Eurostreets, the community programme for Eurovision.
Squash’s artistic director Clare Owens said; ‘We’re excited to be working on the legacy solidarity tablecloth this summer, which will be an enduring demonstration of the welcome and support that Liverpudulians have shown Ukrainians arriving to the region and will also share a universal message of solidarity. Beautifully crafted by many hands, it will be an illustration of people working together and standing side by side with those facing oppression.’
PHOTOS BY LUCY HUNTER & CLARE OWENS
SUMMER SOLSTICE
WEDNESDAY 21ST JUNE
JOIN IN OUR ANNUAL CELEBRATION ON THIS LIGHTEST OF DAYS! EVERYONE IS WELCOME!
Gather with artists, gardeners, cooks and healing practitioners for ritual-making, self-nurture and merriment.
SUMMER SOLSTICE HIGH NOON PARTY Wednesday 21st 12-2pm
COME TAKE SOME REST IN THE GARDEN AT THIS GREAT TRANSITION POINT OF THE YEAR. JOIN IN WITH:
Water-colouring
Tea ceremony
Solstice canapes
L8 pop-up Apothecary
High summer altar
SUMMER SOLSTICE SOCIAL Wednesday 21st 5-7pm
COME JOIN US BY THE SOLSTICE EVENING FIRE FOR REFLECTION, CONTEMPLATION & DEEP RELAXATION.
PLUS GREAT SUMMER MENU IN THE SQUASH CAFE INC. L8 STRAWBERRY & LAVENDER CREAM TEAS!
SQUASH CELEBRATION DAY
SATURDAY APRIL 27TH 11AM-2PM
Come together to celebrate all things Squash at the Squash building, at the Grapes Community Food Garden, next door to Toxteth TV and along Windsor Street.
Join in our annual Squash seed planting ritual
Take a walk down the 100-Year Street
Help make a Beltane pickle
Try great seasonal tastes
Gather around the fire with neighbours and new friends
FREE / BY DONATION / DROP-IN
SQUASH CELEBRATON 2022/3 PICS BY JON BARRACLOUGH & CLARE OWENS
At the end of every April we celebrate Squash the seed, the gourd and Squash the organisation! Come by to meet the Squash team and help us begin the annual Squash sowing journey – planting many different varieties of Squash and growing them alongside other local gardeners. Then in autumn, join in the harvest Squash feast!
SOLIDARITY TABLECLOTH
The Solidarity Tablecloth project was Squash’s joyful contribution to the Eurovision Song Contest that took place in Liverpool in May 2023. This participatory project of unity, standing in solidarity with Ukrainian people, was part of Eurostreet: Culture Liverpool’s unique education & communities programme, to celebrate all things Eurovision.
Throughout the project, artist Tabitha Moses led creative workshops and sessions during the banquets* exploring symbols of solidarity, unity and support. These ideas and artworks have informed a collaborative embroidery legacy artwork; the Solidarity Tablecloth, sewn by many hands of stitchers from across the city.
FINISHING THE SOLIDARITY TABLECLOTH, LUGHNASADH, AUGUST 2023 pics by Lucy Hunter
The Solidarity Disco *Banquets were super-friendly and fun gatherings, full of music, singing, cooking, disco-dancing and eating, and took place in the week leading up to the Eurovision song contest at venues across Liverpool inc. LISTER STEPS AT THE OLD LIBRARY, LIVERPOOL LIGHTHOUSE, THE ASSOCIATION OF UKRAINIANS& AT SQUASH.
The Squash team took the wealth and energy of Eurovision into communities. Disco tunes, beautifully curated by DJ Lady Spice, filled the air as visitors were invited to ‘dance while you cook’, having a boogie whilst cooking delicious dishes alongside Ukrainian cook Olha Dudarchuk & Squash cooks. Together we cooked Ukrainian foods; delectable varenyky dumplings & borscht plus hearty scouse, and Windsor Street-grown rhubarb cake, and then we all came together to share in the wonderful co-created banquets!
SOLIDARITY DISCO BANQUET AT SQUASH pics by Lucy Hunter
Also in the music mix there was wonderful singing, lead by Ukrainian Rock Choir leader, vocal coach & singer/songwriter Christina Dmytryk & award winning composer & manager of the vocal ensemble, Sense of Sound Singers JenniferJohn, with extra vocals from Hope Street Harmonies choir.
SOLIDARITY DISCO BANQUET AT LISTER STEPS AT THE OLD LIBRARY pics by Lucy Hunter
Squash’s artistic director Clare Owens said;
‘We have been very moved by the many expressions of solidarity that have come about through this project, from sharing different cultural foods, to voicing stories of struggle, to trusting in the magic of hospitality. The banquets themselves were such a joy to take part in and the Squash team of artists and cooks felt so honoured to meet and cook, sing, dance & eat with so many people across the city.
The legacy solidarity tablecloth artwork is an enduring demonstration of the welcome and support that Liverpudulians have shown Ukrainians arriving to the region and will also share a universal message of solidarity. Beautifully crafted by many hands, it is an illustration of people working together and standing side by side with those facing oppression.’
Solidarity Disco Banquets was part of EuroStreet, a unique educational programme curated for schools + non-school educational settings, to celebrate all things #Eurovision. Everyone’s invited to get involved. A mixture of events + resources find out more here.
SPRING EQUINOX CELEBRATION
WEDNESDAY 22ND MARCH 11AM-1PM
On this day of almost equal day and night, join us for our annual ritual of balance.
At the garden; meet the lovely gardeners, help sow some seeds, join in our Spring Equinox rituals, have a gentle spring stretch, set spring intentions and enjoy tasty spring soup around the fire.
We’ll be adding the ash we kept from the Imbolc fire last month and adding it to the Spring Equinox fire in an act of connection and reflection.
We’ve been supported by Liverpool Food Growers Network for this gathering and together will be sharing the story of how our community garden began and developed.
