We’ve long followed the BBC Food Programme’s annual Food & Farming Awards, cheering on our allies, so what a thrill and an honour it is to be nominated in 2025.
We’d like to say thanks to judge Leyla Kazim, who chose Gaia as one of three finalists in the Digital Creator category, for having such an honest chat with us about using digital channels for good. A question we’re constantly asking ourselves is how to show up online when it can feel so competitive, so extractive, so loud. It is awesome and beautiful and globe-changing that so many of us can inspire each other on social media, and every one of Gaia’s Instagram posts is an attempt at being present with compassion, humility and some big dollops of joy. We see the irony in restoring life-to-life connection through a virtual world, but it can be a wonderful place to start.
The nomination also recognises Gaia’s longstanding work across digital art forms from film to the written word. You can find the latest stories from We Feed The UK here, our Seed Sovereignty Programme here, and the African Earth Jurisprudence Collective here. You can also find our film archive on Vimeo, beginning from our movement-defining documentation of seed systems in the trilogy Seeds of Justice, Seeds of Freedom and Seeds of Sovereignty, right up to our most recent short-form series about seed in the UK and revival of biocultural diversity in Africa.
Whatever we do, we strive to do with artistry. This is most visible in programmes like We Feed The UK – uniting nature-friendly farmers with photographers and poets – but it runs through the veins of Gaia’s body of work. The arts are an earthly and ancient vessel that have been stripped of power in modern times: these methods of perception and expression trivialised by the left-brain, linear, logical thinking that’s been pedestalled by colonialism, capitalism and industry. It has become harder to live in storied relation to everything around us, in the way that would have once given communities a huge amount of meaning, strength, and collective power. Returning to a practice of creating digital content poetically is a delicate activism; a return to our capacity to feel, and to connect.
Thank you to everyone who is on the journey with us, through our We Feed The UK campaign, Seed Sovereignty Programme, Yes to Life No to Mining network, African Earth Jurisprudence Collective, Alliance for the Amazon and beyond. We’re grateful to the BBC Food & Farming Awards for seeing and celebrating us all. From the soil sisters to the seed whisperers we work with around the world, it is your stories that deserve this recognition.