3rd October 2026 - Cherry Truluck, Georgia Hughes + Friends
GROWING TOGETHER: PERMACULTURE FOR LAND AND COMMUNITY
What if the principles that make a healthy ecosystem — diversity, cooperation, resilience, working with rather than against — are also the principles that make a healthy community?
This month, Rural Voices curator, food artist and researcher Cherry Truluck will host a panel discussion with permaculture practitioner Georgia Hughes and special guests Claire Loder and Jude Rice (co-founders of @bloomingwhiteway ) and Laura Corfield (co-founder of @shiftbristol ). The conversation will explore permaculture in its fullest sense: not just a method for growing food, but a whole way of designing how we live together. They'll explore agroecological growing — building soil, working with natural cycles, designing productive land that regenerates rather than depletes — alongside its lesser-known counterpart, social permaculture: applying the same ethics of care, fair share, and interdependence to how communities organise, share resources, and support one another.
Whether you are a permaculture expert or just curious, you'll find lots to inspire you and get you thinking differently about the world around us and how everything is connected.
🌿 Expect a delicious breakfast full of local produce and a wide-ranging discussion on what permaculture can teach us about resilience — in the soil and in the social fabric — and what it might mean for the future of rural life in Horningsham, and beyond.
Cherry Truluck has been curating (and cooking breakfast for) the Rural Voices events since they began in 2024! Day-to-day she is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher, who works with food, farming and communities - looking at how our relationship with plants and the cycles of the natural world might give us clues as to how to live better together and work towards viable (and joyful) futures.
She has created collaborative events and performances for the Hayward Gallery (London), nGbK (Berlin), Messums West (Tisbury) and the Wilson (Cheltenham), among many others, as well as in muddy fields, barns and community spaces all over the world. Cherry has also developed a workshop programme called “A Recipe for Imagining your Community as an Ecosystem” which she has delivered for the Gaia Foundation, Floating University Berlin/Cement Fields, ‘Food In Our Hands’ - the Landworkers’ Alliance Food Sovereignty Summit and BIRCA Bornholm, which supports ecological and activist organisations to re-imagine their working practices in closer alignment to the way they want to work with the environment.
Georgia Hughes is an organic gardener and a recent graduate of Shift Bristol. She puts her permaculture skills into practice at home with 2 acres of orchard, vegetable garden, compost heaps and a wildlife pond. At the heart of Georgia’s organic growing and permaculture practice, she is exploring what it really means to be ‘self sufficient’ and how we can garden for nature.
Laura Corfield is a permaculture educator, facilitator and nature-connected coach based in Frome. In 2010 she co-founded SHIFT Bristol, and has spent many years creating transformative learning experiences rooted in permaculture, community and regenerative practice. Laura is particularly interested in how people can build agency, deepen their connection with place and work collectively towards fairer, more resilient futures.
Claire Loder and Jude Rice are the co-founders of Blooming Whiteway, a community gardening and wildlife project on the Whiteway estate in Bath, whose focus is around citizen action in response to the climate and ecological emergencies. Action on our doorsteps, at street/community/neighbourhood scale, with an emphasis on soil, water, food. and ecology.
Claire Loder: An artist and ceramicist interested in ecology, gardening for wildlife, and community engagement. She started gardening in street planters during lockdown, leading to broader local greening initiatives.
Jude Rice: A community grower and gardener working at Bath City Farm, where she runs horticultural training programmes and educational initiatives connecting people with food and nature. She is especially interested in growing as a way to connect and share knowledge with people about food and nature.