Let's Get Botanical Together: The Derek Jarman Pocket Park
Manchester Art Gallery and Pride in Ageing at LGBT Foundationhave been working in partnership to create a Derek Jarman Pocket Park at the Mosley Street entrance of Manchester Art Gallery.
This new community garden space has been designed and planted by a volunteer group of green-fingered LGBT+over 50s from Greater Manchester, with support from artist Juliet Davis-Dufayard. As well as providing a functional space for Manchester Art Gallery’s climate and wellbeing work the garden will be a place for the people of Manchester and the wider world to come together, relax, share ideas and enjoy a taste of “immersive nature” in the centre of the City.
The planting in the Derek Jarman Pocket Park is inspired by filmmaker, gay rights activist and gardener Derek Jarman’s celebrated garden in Dungeness as well as the life experiences of our LGBT+volunteer group, who are of the same or similar generations to Jarman. Almost 30 years on from Jarman’s landmark 'Queer’ exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, this volunteer group continue to be inspired by the messages and movements for LGBT+ equality which Jarman and others started in the 1980s, and are supporting LGBT Foundation to continue their work towards a fair and equal society where all LGBT+ peoplecan achieve their full potential.
Project partners have created a Zine to draw on the work of the collective to tell the story of the co-creation of a garden space which grew out of the wider ‘Derek Jarman Protest! project.’ In the words of members of the volunteer group...LGBT+over 50s, Let’s Get Botanical Together!