We were approached in May of 2022 by a videographer from Canada, Kate Colenbrander, who had a proposal to share with us. Kate's pitch was an offer to travel to a number of WWOOF UK farms and interview the hosts and volunteers to include in a promotional film/s.
Once we had seen Kate's work we realised that a budding talent was knocking at our door and we became very excited.
We are super pleased with every single version of Grow Together and feel that the very essence of WWOOFing has been encapsulated by the words chosen by the hosts, volunteers and workers interviewed.
This is how Kate describes the process of making the films:
'This documentary was a labour of love made while I travelled the UK from farm to farm, volunteering as a WWOOFer while documenting the work, land, people and stories around me. What I soon realized is that it’s extremely easy to be disconnected from the work of a farm if you yourself have never witnessed or participated in it yourself.
The conversations I was able to have did not just revolve around the food we were producing but more so about the passion and necessity each host had to share. Share ability, space, awareness and care with the WWOOFers, volunteers and workers on their farms. Simply put by Rosa Farber at Laine Organic Farm, “we all eat, which means there’s a lot of people producing food for us to eat”.
My ultimate goal with this project is not just to introduce you to those people but more importantly open up the conversation around food in a more normalized and personal way. It's very easy to get overwhelmed when looking at issues that affect us all but we feel little control over, like crises of food and sustainability. However, if you actually make the first steps by familiarizing yourself with process rather than the problem surrounding how we eat, there can be a motivation to change that goes beyond guilt and paralyzation.
So whether this makes you WWOOF for a month, a weekend or simply have a chat at your farmers market I hope you will make an effort to ask those important questions about how something gets on your plate'.
Kate Colenbrander
katecolenbrander.com/
Video Photography Design
If you'd like to join WWOOF UK and experience our volunteering opportunities for yourself or to become a host in the UK please visit our website: wwoof.org.uk/en/how-it-works
Land-based practical skills are more popular than ever within the dual challenges of the climate emergency and coronavirus, so now is the best time ever to explore the UK countryside and learn relevant knowledge in a very practical setting through hands-on experiences.
Choose the situation that best suits your interests and passions, we have so many to choose from including organic farms, smallholdings, intentional communities, Scottish crofts, country estates and even a castle.
You can join online today: wwoof.org.uk​
Minimum age for membership is 16 years - there is no upper age limit!!!
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