Floraffiti is always changing, embodying the local community

This iteration of Floraffiti will focus on the climate crises and environmental justice (EJ), a movement that has widened our lens of environmental concern and activism. One lesson of this movement has been that our lived environments, like natural ones, are controlled through public policy and industrial practices that don’t consider their impact on communities along racial lines. Specifically, Black, Indigenous, and otherwise minoritized people of color are among the most vulnerable to the adverse consequences of environmental crises and the solutions proposed to remedy them. Floraffiti will combine eco-social engagement through poetry workshops with the intent to inform and educate, thereby disrupting climate change hierarchical structures on a local level. It amplifies community voices to a broader reach of members in the greater local community who have either created or have been oversaturated with the prevailing narrative of the impact of climate change serving to uphold the hierarchical systems in place and to reach those who have become numb to believe they will ever be heard as the crises and ill-designed attempts at environmental sustainability continue to spiral. The environmental justice themed poetry workshops will address these social-political challenges and inequities that are exacerbated by the climate crisis.

The free community poetry workshops will provide the opportunity to examine and respond to the inequities that exist throughout the towns of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, considering closely their respective attempts to create a Green future. The participants will creatively write about their personal perspectives based on their experiences, concerns, as well as needs, and hopes for change resulting from these discussions. 

Each written piece will be recorded and will correspond to a relative word chosen to be planted by the workshop participants. The recording will be uploaded and accessible via a QR code, which will be printed at each site with its respective words and phrases as long as the plantings last. The public is invited to volunteer to plant the seeds of Floraffiti with Floraffiti Founder, Carter Hubbard, and project participants in an atmosphere of welcoming and inclusive community engagement, supporting conversation, interaction, and a positive relationship-building experience.

This project is sponsored by: