As we enter into the darkest weeks of the year, we invite you to gather in together around the fire to celebrate Samhain; the end and beginning of the Celtic New Year.
Add the names of lost loved ones to the altar, be they ancestors, family members, friends or those we’ve never met. Taste warming mulled apple & fire cider made at the Equinox. Have a chat through your hopes, worries, griefs & joys.
Bring something to burn.
“Samhain is upon us, marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, a time of cold and darkness when the veil between the living and the spirit world is believed to be at its thinnest. The word “Samhain” is derived from old Irish and means “summer’s end.” It is a time to bid farewell to the warmth and light of summer and prepare for the introspective and cold months ahead.” from Landworkers Alliance
Photos from Autumn Alchemy / Samhain 2023 by Lucy Hunter and Erik OT
Over the Autumn Equinox weekend 21/22 September 2024 (the eve of the Labour Party conference & the first national march for Palestine in Liverpool), we welcomed our community to build more hope by sharing the harvest and playing out on Windsor Street. Activities included pavement drawing, D-Jing & dancing, seed-saving, making immune-boosting tonics, street sofa & fireside chats, ‘Digesting Politics’, mindful crafting, ‘Trustfrastructure’, a ritual journey walk, eating soup & cake, and our annual Harvest Auction! Check out 100 Year Street News; a collaborative publication focused around the Equinox Weekender to keep the fires of hope and possibility lit on Windsor Street.
The Equinox Weekender was part of ‘Seeds of Hope’: a series of hopeful happenings all across the UK in autumn 2024, with community growing and nature connection at their heart. With support from Joseph Rowntree Foundation events took place from Inverness to Hastings via Liverpool, Powys, Bristol and beyond – reflecting the hope and solidarity we know exists in communities everywhere, and inviting all of us to get behind it. Amid concern about the rise of far-right populism and widespread feelings of fatalism, these celebrations of amazing people and communities growing hope and building belief in better futures are exactly what we need right now. Read the ‘Seeds of Hope’ zine here!
THE EQUINOX WEEKENDER PROGRAMME…
SATURDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER 10AM-4PM & 6-9PM
GROUNDING CEREMONY 10-11am
Let’s tune into the Equinox with meditation, movement & altar making.
A magical evening of food and comedy raising funds for Habibti Liverpool & Squash’s own ‘Soup it Forward’, co-hosted by our patron Andi Oliver! More info here.
SUNDAY 22ND SEPTEMBER 10-4PM
THE ART OF SEED SAVING10AM – 12 NOON
Help to sort, clean & pack seeds collected from our gardens to replenish the Toxteth Seed Library. More info here.
MINDFUL CRAFTING 10AM – 12 NOON
Enjoy gentle crafting with natural & recycled materials.
COMMUNITY DJ-ING12-3PM
Bring your own vinyl and help make a chilled equinox afternoon
HEALING GARDEN1-4pm
Come and relax in the garden with fire, meditation, crafting & music.
A balancing walk together along the 100-Year Street from spring to oak. More info here.
PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER GERTHARDT, CLARE OWENS & MINA BIHI
LUGHNASADH FIRE CELEBRATION
FRIDAY 2ND AUGUST 12 NOON – 2PM
GRAPES COMMUNITY FOOD GARDEN
Come celebrate Lughnasadh / Lammas; the Gaelic fire festival marking the first grain harvest. We’ll be firing up 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.
FREE/BY DONATION
SUMMER SOLSTICE SUNRISE SOLIDARITY GATHERING FOR YEMEN & GAZA
THURSDAY 20TH JUNE 2024
4AM – 12 NOON
Princes Park, L8
From dawn on the day of most light hours in the year, come for a community solidarity gathering honouring Gaza & Yemen. Let’s welcome in the dawn & longest day together, supporting each other. Please bring something to add to the communal altar.
Come by for: COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY RITUAL FIRE FOOD REST SONG LISTENING WALKS ART STRETCHING CONTEMPLATION
Everyone is welcome.
Meet under the big oak tree near Woodhenge, Devonshire Rd/ Belvedere gate.
We’ll be raising funds for Habibti Liverpool & Medical Aid for Palestinians
Schedule:
4am | Community Set-up, come help us set up this special space for gathering
4:40am | Gong at Sunrise and Solidarity Circle of Peace
5am Onwards | Breakfast
5.30 am Onwards |Solstice Altar making with Clare
6am Onwards | Solidarity paper chain making
6:30am | Solidarity Circle of Peace
7am | Elderflower tea walk with Jackie
8:30-9am | Movement with Maxine
9:30am | Qi Gong with Liz
10:30am | Tree Walk with Dave
11am | Solidarity Circle of Peace
11am – 12 Noon | Making with Nature with Angelica
11:30am | Circle Stretch with Anita
12 Noon | Solidarity Circle of Peace and Closing Gong
SPRING EQUINOX
WEDNESDAY 20TH MARCH 12 NOON – 2PM
GRAPES COMMUNITY FOOD GARDEN
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.’