Heart & Soil Community CIC

Heart & Soil Community CIC believe composting can be one of the very best daily practices to care for the earth and take climate action as well promote connection with nature to support people's wellbeing.

Now more than ever before, communities are becoming aware of the twin issues of biodiversity collapse and the climate emergency. Composting offers people a way of feeling more hopeful, by offering them tools to actively making a difference through small changes within their daily lives.

Composting encourages people to get outside, to move their bodies tending and turning a heap, and provides a fantastic growing medium encourage people to garden more.

They received £1,997 to run composting workshops at community gardens and local schools.

They ran five 'Head, Heart, Hands. Compost workshops in community gardens including; Stream Walk Community Garden in Whitstable, Lynsted Community Kitchen Garden in Sittingbourne, Abbey Physic Community Garden in Faversham and Windmill Community Gardens in Margate.

Community garden volunteers recommended the workshop to other community gardens, so they experienced no difficulty finding venues for the workshop delivery.

“Our first composting workshop was so well received and attended at Stream Walk we were asked whether we could return to deliver a dedicated and bespoke composting and soil care event just for garden volunteers.” Amy Poole, Director

The training created ripples of change in private or community growing spaces beyond the community garden venues where the training ran. The attendance by key staff e.g. Garden Co-ordinators ensured that the learning could be embedded within the community gardens.

“The session was very engaging and informative. I have learnt a lot during this session. We have been inspired to restructure/rebuild our compost heap in the community garden. Excellent workshop.” Volunteer, Lynsted Community Kitchen Garden

They delivered their 'We've Got Worms!' vermicomposting/wormery making workshop in three local schools - Ospringe CE Primary School and Eastling Primary School (near Faversham) and Westmeads Community Infant School (Whitstable).

Children learnt about the importance of caring for the soil and were offered a way of practically caring themselves, by creating vermicompost with their pet worms that recycle classroom food and paper scraps. A movement activity explored the three groups of earthworms (Anecic, Endogeic and Epigeic) and their roles in the soil. An illustrated poem elucidated the role of composting worms specifically and their castings use in regenerative growing. A practical session tearing and wetting bedding for their wormeries discussed worms habitat needs and a fun sorting game allowed them to explore which foods were 'Worm Dinner' or 'Not a Winner'. The associated teaching pack will enable them to go on to use vermicast in their school growing projects and gave ideas on how to keep the learning alive. The children and teaching staff were actively engaged in the workshop, asking lots of questions and thoroughly enjoying the mix of different experiences.