Listen to the Lavender

Listen to the Lavender is a collaborative outdoor audio installation by Manuela de los Rios with Lana Al Khateeb and community group Room to Be. It was devised through a shared desire to explore how communal green spaces can become places of care, allyship and collective listening for queer identifying people. Presented across Dundee’s community gardens, the installation invites audiences to sit and listen in on a series of honest and intimate conversations between members of Room to Be, who reflect on what helps them feel welcome, safe, and connected within shared green spaces. 

Immersed in Al Khateeb’s sound piece alongside the living atmosphere of the gardens, their sounds, scents, textures, and rhythms, garden workers and visitors become part of the living installation and are encouraged to slow down, reflect, and share their own responses with others.

Listen to the Lavender evolved through a series of collaborative workshops where participants collectively made monoprints, created sound recordings, collaged and painted the listening chairs whilst shaping the project at each stage. It was important to have this time to connect to each other, to garden life and listen to ourselves, to one another, and to Nature as a non-judgemental ally, one that challenges rigid binaries such as male/female or human/non-human. Alongside the installation, reflective texts, photographs, and visual work are being documented through an artist zine and a series of postcards, extending the reach of the project beyond the gardens themselves.

Listen to the Lavender will tour three of Dundee’s community gardens throughout the summer, culminating in an LGBTQIA+ allyship session later this year that will hold space for learning, conversations and collective action.

This project was developed through the Art and Nature Collective’s Creative Gardens residency and supported by the Dundee Climate Fund.

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Manuela de los Rios is a Dundee-based artist and community organiser. Her socially engaged practice and research is focused on regenerative placemaking projects that nurture people and urban nature. Her interactive performances, public installations and experiences are grounded in local skills, stories and collective imagination and making.

Lana Al Khateeb is a Palestinian-Scottish sound and visual artist based in Dundee, following an upbringing in Qatar. With an interdisciplinary approach, she conducts her practice through sound works, using violin, piano & voice, utilising installation through recycled materials, watercolour illustrations as well as waterless lithography printmaking.