As part of next weekend's Map Marathon, the Serpentine Gallery have invited inspiring Mexican artist Pedro Reyes to London to plant a tree as part of his incredible Palas Por Pistolas project. Pedro saw our meadow online and loved it. So he's chosen Mabley Green as his planting spot!
Palas Por Pistolas is an ongoing project Pedro started in Culiacán, a city in western Mexico with an extraordinarily high rate of gunshot deaths. So to help combat this violence, he held a gun amnesty to encourage local people to hand in their firearms. In total, he collected 1527 weapons (40% of which turned out to be high-powered automatic weapons exclusively for military use), which he melted down and turned into shovels. Now he's using them to plant 1527 trees across the world, and showing all the locations with a Google Map. AND the first and only tree to be planted for the project will be in our very own Mabley Green!
Because we like to keep things local, The Hackney Community Tree Nursery have kindly agreed to give us one of their young saplings - a walnut tree, grown right here in Hackney. So as well as linking our park to a fantastic global artwork, in a few years our new tree will give us a delicious walnut harvest too.
Come help us plant this historic tree!
Pedro and a curator from The Serpentine will be at Mabley Green from 10am on Friday 15 October. So if you'd like to come meet the artist and take part in the planting, come along! We won't be in the meadow itself, but in the main part of Mabley Green - between the overpass and the boulder (see the map below).
Also, our new tree will require special attention until it's properly established - so we'll need lots of people to help out by watering it. If you'd like to get involved, just email mableymeadow@gmail.com and we'll work out a roster (afterall, we don't want to drown it with kindness!).
That's a lot of palas or shovels. Acting and taking responsibility in an environmental awareness activity is really an act that should be shared with others. I hope everyone will do the same and create a clean and green environment for the future generations. Environmental Training can help people understand and be aware of different things to save the environment.
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