Offerings, People + Organizations
April 27th 1-6pm FDR Park- Picnic Area A
Dyeing for Fungi : Natural Dye Workshop
Experience the magic of natural dye, fungus edition! Natural dyes are all colors derived from natural resources such as plants, fungi, lichens, minerals and insects, and many fruiting bodies can be collected for the dye pot. In this workshop, participants will paint and stencil with mineral mordants to create imagery on fabric, and will then be dyed by extracting colors from mushrooms. Participants will engage in art-making, while also discussing the history, science and methodology surrounding these techniques that have been used by artisans for centuries. Participants will leave this workshop with a basic knowledge of natural dye that will enable a continued practice in the future. Suitable for all ages and skill levels.
Katie Kaplan
Katie Kaplan is an artist living and working in Philadelphia. In her multi-disciplinary practice, a core focus on printmaking expands into sculpture, textiles, video and installation. Kaplan currently works as the studio technician in the Fibers and Material Studies Department at Tyler School of Art, where she also maintains a natural dye garden. She is frequently involved in applying her artistic labor to cultural organizing, activist art and mutual aid projects, work that is intrinsic to her practice as a whole.
Birds of FDR Park
BirdPhilly
Our chief goal at BirdPhilly is to get Philadelphia area residents interacting with nature. Seeking out wildlife and spending time in green spaces keeps you active, alert, and engaged with your surroundings. Beyond the simple joy of the beauty of birds, we're trying to share with people how being a nature enthusiast is good for you as an individual.
Forage Amble: Responsibly Harvesting Food, Fiber, Medicine & Seeds from the Land
Nate Kleinman will lead a hands-on forage through a portion of the park while discussing practical and ethical considerations of foraging with participants. As co-founder of Experimental Farm Network and a founding member of Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance, Nate forages extensively for seeds which are then offered to the public for planting, so that practice will be a major topic of discussion during our amble, along with topics including plant domestication, naturalization, re-wilding, climate change, and ecosystem evolution. In a world where the right to forage has been taken away from so many peoples — from Palestinians to Indigenous peoples on this continent — join us as we revel in the free bounty of the natural world.
Nate Kleinman
Nate Kleinman is co-founder of Experimental Farm Network and a founding member of Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance. He was born in Philadelphia and has called the region home for most of his life. Currently he lives and farms in southern New Jersey. He has been growing food and foraging since he was a small child.
FDR Park Biodiversity and Habitat Creation
FDR Park is a great opportunity to observe habitat creation and discuss the importance of our vital East Coast Wetlands. Comparable to a biological buffet, wetlands support a vast food web while providing impressive ecological services. As we walk, we will learn about wetland benefits and identify plant/pollinator relationships to gain understanding of an under-appreciated ecosystem and galvanize how to steward similar habitat for biodiversity promotion in our own spaces!
Isaiah Bednash
Isaiah intersects the middle of farmer, scientist, and activist, building sustainable systems through native plants & fungi. Driven by increasing loss of Appalachian woodland, Isaiah has shifted to land stewardship as a call to action against climate catastrophe. Zay seeks to establish more native habitats while educating others how to contribute, protecting our crucial biodiversity through the creation of community-wide goals. Other points of focus for Zay are: Wasps & Bees, the Carolina Sandhills, Lichens, Prairie restoration, and North African music.
You can find Isaiah HERE and working alongside Fungal Diversity Survey
Flower Brushing with Anansi
Flower Brushing is an eco-sensual body work. This is a great way to welcome your body into the springtime energy and get some gentleness.
Anansi Webb
Anansi is a Black trans land steward, plant communicator, and body worker based here in Philly. He has been working with the land for the past 7 years and has a wealth of knowledge to share.
The Interspecies Artist's Way: Navigating Towards Aesthetics of Multispecies Justice
To address the converging crises of our time, we must shift commonly held beliefs and misaligned values which reproduce systems of subjugation and dominance. How can we do so through our creative and artistic endeavors? How might our frequent multispecies interactions be fertile substrate for a shift towards re-story-ing relationships to create conditions of multispecies thriving? We will wander through curiosity, embed ourselves in the compost of narratives of dominance, teasing out awkward pathways of intersectional liberation across all the queerdoms of life.
Shanhuan Manton
Shanhuan is an interspecies inquirer and filmmaker composting established methods of cinematic storytelling to alchemize extractive methods of production into regenerative rituals, oriented towards making real the possibilities of speculative worlds by utilizing collective storytelling as a transformative cultural practice. Their practices include a roaming tea ritual that opens nonlinear spacetimes for intentional (be)coming together, facilitated explorations of interspecies collaboration, and weaving webs of community in collective study.
Medicines of Trees
Mushrooms like trees...so should we! We'll spend some extended time with a few trees, nibbling, smelling, tasting, and discussing the ways that they act in and on our bodies from an energetic, chemical, and western physiological perspective. Mostly sitting, with some walking from tree to tree.
Kenton Cobb
Kenton Cobb (they/them) is a clinical herbalist and educator, street medic, Gestalt therapy practitioner, and beginner fungi freak. They have a sliding-scale practice in Philly and online, helping clients address health goals and challenges with botanical medicine and lifestyle changes. They are clinical faculty at Commonwealth Herbs, and also teach classes locally about all things herbal medicine.
Mushroom Cooking Demo + Tasting
Mushrooms are intimidating in the kitchen for some folks, so we are here to demystify and show their diversity in textures, flavors and use. Together we explore ways one can easily gain access to the nutritious and delicious world of edible mushrooms. With mushrooms gaining popularity, it’s easier to find more exotic and rarer mushrooms in super markets. Together we will prepare and cook various cultivated mushrooms!
Olga Tzogas
Olga Tzogas started her love affair with Fungi and plants over 15 years ago, with the help and guidance of family, teachers and community. In 2011, Smugtown Mushrooms was started, which provides cultivation supplies to grow mushrooms, indoors or outdoors, for food or for medicine. Alongside the collaboration of the collective, The Mycelium Underground, Olga helped create the New Moon Mycology Summit in 2018. Annually, Olga returns to her ancestral homeland to guide small groups immersed in land based and traditional knowledge of the country of Greece, highlighting the Mushrooms + Culture of Greece.
Myceliating the Commons: Outdoor ‘Guerilla’ Mushroom Cultivation
Making stropharia woodchip beds. Walking tour through the FDR meadows to demonstrate suitable microclimates for bed locations. Finding existing woodchip patches in public to inoculate with different species of mushrooms.
Matt Kiser
Matt Kiser is a community scientist mycophile based in Southwest Philadelphia. His mycological endeavors spanning a decade have connected him to many people and places, as well as redirecting his growth path. The bulk of his myco-experience lay in aseptic lab work, cultivating numerous species of gourmet and medicinal mushrooms, and making concentrated extractions of them. Selling mostly wholesale product under the name CellarDoor Fungus, he crafts his extractions with care from spore to tincture. He brings experience from utilizing low tech methods to the higher tech. Having attended countless classes, workshops, and mycology convergences, he maintains that education and accessibility are the most important factors of how mycology can make the world a better place. Recently having bought land in coastal Maine, his long-game plans are to establish his off-grid mushroom farmstead and remediate the land through myco-agroforesrty.
SAVE THE MEADOWS
A movement of individuals & groups opposed to the privatization & destruction of South Philly's FDR Meadows to install acres of toxic turf & asphalt.
The site to the Mycelial Gathering is in direct threat of being desecrated by the proposed plans of the ecocide. We welcome Save the Meadows to share information and their work and how to get involved.
Philadelphia Mycology Club
The Philadelphia Mycology Club's mission is to study, collect, and document fungi; to foster accessibility, diversity, and inclusivity through educating the community on fungi; and to steward the land and advocate for fungal conservation.
Philly Myco Club will set up a table and bring preserved and fresh mushroom specimens, reference books to aid in educated about wild mushroom and ecological literacy.
Letter Writing + Art for Palestine and Sudan
The direct action station will urge gathering participants to contact Philadelphia representatives and Philadelphia news outlets to demand an end to the genocides and mass displacement in both Palestine and Sudan. We will supply letters, writing supplies, templates, and information on the genocide in Sudan including the Darfur Women’s Action Group’s Rapid Response Toolkit.
We are urging constituents to contact their representatives demanding an end to all United States military, financial, and political support of Israel, as Israel is occupying Palestinian land and committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Israel has been bombing, starving, and displacing Palestinians in Gaza and massacring Palestinians in the West Bank for the last 75 years, more aggressively so since October 7, 2023. In the last six months, Israel has murdered over 34,000 Palestinians.
Since April 2023, between 13,000-15,000 Sudanese people have been killed, and over 6.3 million people have been displaced. Over 5.1 million people have been forcibly displaced within Sudan and an additional 1.2 million people have been displaced outside the nation. Sudanese organizers are calling for action by the international community to stop the slaughter and extermination of the indigenous African population in Sudan. We are calling for news outlets to report on the genocide and for representatives to support all calls for ceasefire in Sudan.
KIDS ZONE / ARTS + CRAFTS
Join fellow families and their kids in a shared, comfy and education filled area during our Mycelial Gathering. Books, learning, art and crafts to your kiddos to enjoy and spend time engaging with their fellow mushroom and earth loving buddies!