SEED BANDS 2022

Making Of Seed Bands

Plantable & Biodegradable

Naturally Dyed

Embedded with Living Seeds

Handcrafted & Handmade

Recycled & Recyclable

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Our Backdrop

The Covid-19 pandemic was a wake-up call for people across the globe. Calls to re-organise and re-imagine society were heard everywhere – a society that was egalitarian, understood the importance of nature & embraced biodiversity. Economic development was redefined to better align with ecological harmony & social justice.

This year, we documented the growing ecosystem around us & crafted these bands in the image of our dreams of food sovereignty. These bands urge us to experience food sovereignty through all our senses – so hear, see, touch, smell & taste them to understand what true food sovereignty could be.

This band is handcrafted from naturally dyed & handspun cotton yarn. The cotton is grown organically, free of Intellectual Property Rights, not Genetically Modified, non-hybrid & indigenous. The card on which it is wrapped is handmade, up-cycled & biodegradable. Both the band & the card are plantable, embedded with living seeds.

So just tie, sow & see your relationships sprout beyond the “human”.

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Safety First

Sense : Smell (Khus roots used)

A founding tenet of food sovereignty is that we should all have access to healthy, nutritious and non-toxic food. But India is among the top ten pesticide consuming countries in the world, which is harming human & animal health along with destroying biodiversity. These inputs are also expensive, often leading to debt.

The seeds in this band remind us what something devoid of chemical pollutants smells like – natural and refreshing. They are markers to a more fragrant & safe way of growing food, while conserving the environment around us.

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Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Sense: Taste (Edible beans used)

Nature isn’t singular, and neither are any of us – we are all a rainbow of identities, and our diversity is what makes us stronger! It spices up our food, enhances our life, and helps the environment and all its denizens to thrive. But the biodiversity collapse happening around us threatens the health of the very ecosystems that all life depends on.

The edible seeds embedded in these rainbow bands illuminates an opening into a new world without rigid rows and columns, sans barriers. This alternate reality is not only possible, but necessary – we can taste it on the tip of our tongue.

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Roti, Kapda, Makaan

Sense : Touch (Tuber & hemp used)

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell. We live in a day and age that asks us to constantly seek more & disregard the needs of the non-human world.

We created these bands to touch on the question of how we can satisfy our and our ecosystem’s needs in the least destructive way.

Cotton provides us with food & clothing, the tubers are seed & food & roselle is an incredible plant with edible flowers and hardy fibres which can be used in house construction, paper & rope making, etc.

This band touches our most basic needs by finding their sources locally and in an non-exploitative environment.

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Suno Meri Kahaani

Sense: Sound (Fever nut & Karanj pod used)

Agriculture, like our society, is patriarchal and hierarchical. Males are often decision makers, & women’s labour goes largely unnoticed & underappreciated.

The Fever Nut & the Karanj pod at the centre of this band symbolises this imbalance, and tells us that we need to listen better to each other, and create a new system that is based on democratic decision making. Just like the seed makes a soft sound when you shake it, and the bee buzzes gently around new blossoms, we need to learn to listen with care to each other.

When we listen, we learn; when we learn, we grow.

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Into The Wild

Sense : Sight (Multiple design factors used)

Just being chemical-free isn’t enough to reverse the damages happening due to climate change. We need to start re-imagining our farming landscape – one where grasslands regenerate, rich food forests grow & an agroecological system flourishes that is less agriculture and more wilderness.

We need to let the edges of our fields grow untamed, and see a new ecosystem flourish – one where chameleons roam free, frogs croak on lily pads & kingfishers dart into the pond for fish.

Let us visualise our future where every being is centred, and all our needs met. Watching this slow dance of animals, birds, insects, sunshine, seeds, soils, water & winds.

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Acknowledgement

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