BARBARB is a community of practice led by Tamara Colchester and Hermione Spriggs. 

Our ecocritical research is rooted in the specifics of place, attentional-practice and land-based relating. We create spaces and structures that challenge existing ways of ordering and relating to the world known as ‘Nature’, and invite new shapes of exchange between humans, land and animals. 

We are interested in closing the gap between life and art, and the two modes of inquiry known as ‘tracking’ and ‘foraging’. For us, tracking is an embodied art of noticing that involves speculative questioning and a capacity to be led and instructed by plant and animal intelligences. We’ve found that following creatures deemed “weeds” and “pests” takes us under and over human boundary-lines, and can offer a throughway that brings us face-to-face with the biosocial and geopolitical complexities embedded in place. Allying ourselves with the marginal, we research historic and regenerative ecologies, question hierarchies of knowledge and representation, and gather alternative sources of nourishment. 

We co-develop walks, workshops, publication initiatives and sensory archives with those interested in or subsisting upon forms of hunting and gathering. Working with human and nonhuman communities, with a specific focus on refugees and those seeking asylum, we track our way into questions of belonging, labour, access, and borders. This leads us to constantly challenge our own encultured boundary-keeping impulses.