South Ken Green Trail (July-October 2021) Pop-up nature hubs and installations created by architects, artists and garden designers will leave you buzzing with new ideas and inspiring visions for a greener future. Download the South Ken Green Trail map to follow the trail through wildflower meadows, gardens and art installations in the heart of London’s cultural district. Get up close with bees and wild pollinators and explore architecture inspired by insects, plants with healing properties and imaginative ideas for upcycling materials. The Bee Inspired Activity Day on Friday 20 August is a free outdoor event for families and community groups. Join us for fun hand-on activities with artists and nature experts to get to know the bees and insects that share our city and how we can help look after them. South Ken Green Trail was commissioned by Discover South Kensington in partnership with V&A, Science Museum, Goethe-Institut and the London Festival of Architecture, the trail is being supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, Kensington and Chelsea Council, Westminster City Council and the Let’s Do London programme.
What’s on?
BEE INSPIRED ACTIVITY DAY Friday 20 August 11am-4pm Free outdoor event for families Prince’s Gardens, off Exhibition Road This summer, South Kensington is coming alive with exciting new installations by architects and artists, a green trail for visitors and events bringing people together with nature on our doorsteps to help make our city buzz with bees and wild-pollinators. Our Bee Inspired Activity Day is a free outdoor event for families and community groups. Join us for fun hand-on activities with artists and nature experts to get to know the bees and insects that share our city and how we can help look after them. What can I do there? Get up close and examine the creepy crawlies with the Natural History Museum. Discover a hidden world of bugs with The Royal Parks playing games to learn about their essential role in the parks. Make a model bee to take away. Come face to face with live invertebrates; and find fascinating facts about their food sources as you make a seed bug from clay and whack flowers with a mallet to make a beautiful artwork. Sow your own pot of herb seeds to take home and grow with local organisation Plant Environment. Send a butterfly message and plan a butterfly food package with artist Natalie Taylor and join a bee parade inspired by artist Sophie Lodge. Follow the South Ken Green Trail to explore an algae meadow, up-cycled wind turbine blade and giant wild-bee hive.
Where is it? The activities will take place in Prince’s Gardens, a tranquil green space just off Exhibition Road, South Kensington.
Is there food and drink? Please feel free to bring a picnic to enjoy in Prince’s Gardens. There is no catering at the event, but cafes in the nearby area will be open. How do I find out more? Please register here and we’ll send you full details.
Who is organising this? Bee-Inspired Activity Day is part of the South Ken Green Trail , presented by Discover South Kensington and Kensington + Chelsea Festival in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, the Royal Parks, Goethe-Institut London and Westminster City Council. It is part of the Let’s Do London programme.
The South Ken Green Trail – welcoming people and nature on Exhibition Road
An algae factory, a nest-like timber mound and giant slices of a decommissioned wind turbine blade form a series of new ‘green interventions’ unveiled today on London’s Exhibition Road. Together they are supporting the post-pandemic recovery of London’s arts and science district, and demonstrating how plants, greenery and biodiversity can be creatively embedded in London’s public realm, reclaiming space for nature amidst the bustle of the capital. The free-to-visit installations will be in place for everyone to enjoy until October alongside a new walking trail connecting them with other planting and green spaces across the district. A downloadable trail map will help visitors to explore and discover hidden nature in the city, with activities and events throughout the summer providing inspiring ideas for a greener future. Design teams were chosen as part of a competition organised by the London Festival of Architecture and Discover South Kensington. Each has worked with one of the three cultural partner institutions – the V&A, Science Museum and Goethe-Institut – to develop installations that can inspire visitors to Exhibition Road, and to encourage them to further explore this welcoming, vibrant and diverse district. By bringing together leading design and current research in biodiversity and sustainability, the installations epitomise the area’s role in promoting debate and driving progress to address society’s most pressing challenges.
● The Algae Meadow has been created by Seyi Adelekun and Wayward, in collaboration with the V&A, and working with specialists from UCL and Imperial College London. Visitors can meander through a vertical wildflower meadow which connects the architecture of Exhibition Road to the depths of the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park through a hydroponic algae canopy. Standing outside the Natural History Museum, this installation is constructed from local, responsibly sourced and recycled material and is a community build project giving opportunities to London based students and volunteers from the Black Females in Architecture network.
● In Home away from Hive at the Science Museum, Mizzi Studio have created an organic, nest-like timber lattice, layered with medicinal and pollinating plants in consultation with garden designers from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Creating a link with Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries at the museum and Kensington and Chelsea Council’s Bee SuperHighway, the installation provides an immersive hive of discovery, education and biodiversity. Built by Firecracker Works, visitors can walk in and around the structure, whose undulations echo those of natural earth mounds and hives. Inside the structure, plants and daylight pours in to provide beautiful spaces for respite and care for insects as well as joy for visitors.
● Windflower outside the Goethe-Institut by Urban Radicals with Adam Harris has a modified and re-purposed decommissioned wind turbine blade bringing the scale and surprising beauty of this mega-structure into the city centre. This is planted with wildflowers to attract pollinators while allowing visitors to walk through, sit on or enjoy it.
The South Ken Green Trail draws on the cross-pollination of ideas for which London’s arts and science district is renowned, and represents an important opportunity to engage visitors and spark action as the UK prepares to host COP26 and co-ordinate global efforts to tackle climate change. Connecting with cultural partners’ programming around the summit, the Trail builds on increased public interest in nature and green spaces since lockdown, and highlights local biodiversity initiatives including Kensington and Chelsea Council’s Bee SuperHighway.
As well as forming part of the London Festival of Architecture’s year-round programme of public realm interventions, the South Ken Green Trail is also part of the Kensington + Chelsea Festival, a season of fun, inspirational, surprising and extraordinary experiences across Kensington and Chelsea’s iconic venues and public spaces, funded by Kensington and Chelsea Council. Promoting this and other exciting events and activities taking place across the borough in parks, markets, museums and more, the Council is running its K&C Summer of Love campaign to celebrate the breadth of things to do and enjoy this summer. The Green Trail installations will remain in place until the Great Exhibition Road Festival which runs from 9-15 October.
A free annual celebration of science and the arts in South Kensington and online, the Festival brings together scientists, artists, designers and innovators to discuss solutions to the climate emergency. The South Ken Green Trail is being delivered by Discover South Kensington in partnership with the London Festival of Architecture, V&A, Goethe-Institut and Science Museum, and is supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, Kensington and Chelsea Council, Westminster City Council, and the Let’s Do London programme. The Natural History Museum, The Royal Parks and Imperial College London are helping to deliver the trail and events programme. The project has also been made possible through the support of Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, who supplied the wind turbine blade, and idverse, who are providing watering and maintenance for the installations.
Check out the website for more information
