Dandelion Unboxed

ANYTHING GROWS IN OUR 21ST-CENTURY HARVEST FESTIVAL.

Dandelion is a six-month celebration of collaboration, creation and collective action. From gardens to fields, windowsills to wide, open spaces, join us to sow and grow crops of every shape and size – and then come together at harvest time to share what we’ve grown.

Dandelion is inspired by the simple concept of ‘Sow, Grow and Share’: not just food, but also new music, ideas, scientific knowledge and community. Rooted in Scotland but with an international outlook, Dandelion follows the arc of the growing season from April to September – when musicians, makers, scientists and performers will come together for hundreds of inspiring events and activities across Scotland and online.

There’ll be plenty of chances for you to get your hands dirty, too: growing your own at home, joining us at two major free festivals, and coming to a 21st-century community harvest festival – where we’ll cook up the results of our epic growing adventure with good company and new music.

A TIME TO GROW

Unexpected Gardens are springing up across Scotland in 2022. From the Borders to the Highlands, islands to inner cities, indoor spaces to the great outdoors – Dandelion’s nationwide network of gardens will bring new life to underused places and spaces that appear barren or neglected, showing that everywhere has the potential to blossom and bloom.

Dandelion’s Unexpected Gardens will be both fertile growing grounds and surprising public spaces open to all. They’ll host a huge variety of special events, installations and activities during spring and summer, led by the next generation of creative producers and musicians – and all building towards harvest.

We’ll be installing hundreds of Cubes of Perpetual Light – miniature vertical farms and artworks that combine design craft, technological innovation and traditional growing techniques. Scattered throughout Scotland in Unexpected Gardens, schools and beyond, the Cubes will yield a rich variety of crops during 2022 – alongside new music created and recorded for Dandelion by homegrown and international artists.

Dandelion also features sustainable food-and-music festivals in Glasgow and Inverness. Join us for workshops, talks, locally grown food and new music from artists who share Dandelion’s desire to put the culture back into agriculture.

Dandelion is commissioned by EventScotland and funded via the Scottish Government.

GET INVOLVED!

Whether you’re an experienced gardener or you’ve never planted anything before, we’re encouraging you to get growing at home. We’re giving away thousands of free plants and seedlings, and we’re also creating a free online library of resources – giving you everything you need to join our nationwide growing community in 2022 and the years to come.

We’re also inspiring the artists, activists, scientists and creative producers of the future by distributing 200 growing cubes to 100 secondary schools, plus 300,000 seed potatoes and 200 tonnes of growing medium to a further 400 schools – all in all, inviting 100,000 pupils to take part in the Dandelion School Growing Initiative.

Blending traditional growing skills with future farming techniques, these pupils will become citizen scientists in Scotland’s largest ever community growing experiment. And come the autumn, they’ll share the food they’ve produced among their school communities at hundreds of playground Harvest Festivals – alongside art, music, stories and more.