In the past 3 years, Giulia Carabelli and Matthew Beach developed projects with key botanical institutions in London to shape new discourses on plant-human collaborations towards more just multispecies futures. Their events, small and large, have attracted hundreds of people and received extremely positive feedback from work-partners and visitors. Thanks to QM Impact and Public Engagement Funding, they curated an exhibit at the Garden Museum on the values of houseplants in 2023, the “Plant and People Programme” at the South London Botanical Institutes in 2024 and they have also contributed to QM programming by participating to Sustainability Week in 2023 and 2024 as well as the 2024 Peopling the Palace(s) Festival. Giulia has also curated the Environmental Futures Programme with IHSS funding in 2022-24, which involved many outreach events on how to build the future with plants. This will continue within the IHSS, in 2025, with the newly established ‘The Plant Forum’, co-led with Matthew, which aims to continue platforming plant scholars across QM to create a dedicated space where to reflect on the social, political and scientific roles of plants in making worlds.
Their engagement work is creative, timely, and research-informed. It builds on a critical interdisciplinary understanding of plant studies, creating spaces within and outside the university to innovate and advance our collective knowledge on plants and their values in the present and the future. Lastly, their work, focused on plants, offers a more hopeful entry point to discuss climate change and one that re-centre plants in the making of the future.