Join artist, Michelle Atherton, and ecologist, Gino Brignoli for a walk around Abney Park looking at some of the myriad invertebrates responsible for maintaining the nutrient cycle. These often-overlooked creatures perform essential ecosystem functions, breaking down dead plant and animal matter into ever smaller pieces. This action of decomposition creates as it destroys; providing habitat for fungi and bacteria and returning nutrients to the soil so that new life can flourish. Come along to peer under logs, sift through leaf litter and listen to the soil, to discover more about the decomposers above and below ground.

Bios:
Michelle’s current artwork investigates our relationships with transience, decomposition and re-composition as more-than-human activities. The work involves finding experimental ways to explore ephemera: the loss and flows of materialities, including cycles of transformation across species and substances. Alighting on those things and actions that challenge simplistic divisions between what might be identified as living and non-living.

Gino is an ecologist with a particular interest in urban ecology. Cities and industrial spaces can have unexpectedly high ecological value and contain amazing biodiversity. Gino is interested in exploring how we live in, with and alongside all this other urban life.

Access Information: Service dogs welcome. Accompanying carers welcome. Ramp access at Church Street entrance, level access at Stoke Newington High Street entrance. The meeting point will be the High Street entrance to Abney Park. Accessible toilet and babychanging facilities available in the cafe next to the High Street entrance.