Remembering our roots: Cultural practices for community care & well-being

A photo of herbs in test tubes on a table

Remembering our roots: Cultural practices for community care & well-being
Saturday 8 March, 1pm - 5pm
Gumbramorra Hall, Addison Road Community Centre, 142 Addison Road, Marrickville

You are invited to Remembering our roots, a community gathering centred around cultural and ancestral practices from Bilad Al-Sham (the Levant) and First Nations creative practices for well-being. A place to share stories, knowledge and skills around cultural and ancestral practices that centre art, plants, food and making.

Free making workshops
Join us for an afternoon of free drop-in and registered making circles for adults, children and young people focused on mindful and meditative creative practices led by First Nations artists and artists from Bilad Al-Sham. (Please see the full program below for workshop details.)

Caring for Country with Peter Cooley (Indigigrow)
The gathering is grounded in connecting to and caring for the Country one is living on. A special presentation and discussion with Indigigrow’s Peter Cooley (Bidjigal), invites communities to consider how they can connect and care for Country, through tending to native plant gardens and habitats for native animals.

Seed and plant exchange
Participants are invited to bring plants, seeds, cuttings and seedlings to exchange with each other, along with the plants’ associated cultural stories and knowledge. A plant and knowledge exchange will be led by a local community knowledge holder.

Communal food making circle
A collaborative food circle will take place where participants will make a communal pot of mehshi wara’ enab (stuffed vine leaves). Once cooked, food will be wrapped in take-home parcels for people to break-fast and enjoy at home. This circle will invite participants to engage in dialogue and share their own stories, memories and knowledge around communal food practices.

Keeping our communities safe
Remembering our roots is a culturally safer space. Please show respect for the artists, community members and participants at all times.
In the spirit of respect and community care please stay at home and do not attend this event if you are feeling unwell or experiencing cold-like symptoms.
The event will take place indoors and outdoors. Masks are encouraged for indoor activities.

Participating artists & collaborators

DJ Gemma Zeina Iaali Maissa Alameddine

Peter Cooley Dhawundi I Maree Walford

Prince Aydin

Program details

Venue: Addison Road Community Centre, 142 Addison Road, Marrickville

1pm - 5pm	DJ Gemma - tune in to beats that will create atmospheres that transcend the body and move energies.
1pm - 5pm	Plant exchange - Bring along seeds, cuttings, seedlings and plants from your garden to share and exchange with our community. Share your ancestral plants, favourite herbs, medicinal plants, knowledge and experience! Take home new seeds, cuttings and plants for your garden, including native plants endemic to the local area to help regenerate and care for local environments
1pm - 2.30pm & 3pm - 5pm	Meditative DRAWING drop-in with Zeina Iaali - A silent, all ages meditative drawing experience creating space for remembrance, reflection, and healing. Guided by quiet contemplation, connect with a cultural or ancestral plant that holds personal significance and translate this bond into a meditative illustration. This workshop nurtures mindfulness, deepens intuition, and offers a sanctuary for introspection
1pm - 2.30pm & 3pm - 5pm	Creative Mindfulness activities for children and young people with PRINCE AYDIN - Participants will be invited to engage with their local environment through sensory engagement with plant materials—feeling, tasting, smelling, and imagining their sounds. Guided by prompts, they will create experimental marks and drawings, playing with texture, patterns, and the intricate spaces within plants. Drop in, no booking necessary
1pm - 2pm 2pm - 3pm	Collaborative food making circle facilitated by Maissa Alameddine - participants will make Waraq Enib, stuffed grapevine leaves. Come to the table, you will be nourished. Ahlan w Sahla, el bayt baytkon. My house is your house, I am bringing to you my ancestral plant Wara' Enab (Wara' Dawali). Let’s share in honouring the labour of love of our mothers, grandmothers and kin who made food with love - all ages welcome book here (1 - 2pm session) book here (2 - 3pm session)
2pm - 3pm & 4pm - 5pm	Learn the traditional weaving techniques to start a basket, jewellery and other woven products. Engage in the slow and meditative practice of weaving with Gamilaraay/Yuwalaraay artist Maree Walford. All materials provided - 1hr workshops open to people 15+, spaces limited book here (2 - 3pm session) book here (4 - 5pm session)

2.45pm - 3pm	Acknowledgement of Country and intentions of program by Creative Producer Nicole Barakat
3pm - 4pm	Caring for Country with Peter Cooley (Bidjigal) - Gather and listen to Peter Cooley as he shares IndigiGrow’s philosophy and the importance of caring for Country. Consider your own active role in caring for Country

Artist bios

Nicole Barakat
Photo of artist Nicole Barakat in her studio, she sits on a stoll and wears a Keffiyeh, she is surrounded by art making materials and is sitting beside a table that has sewing materials like pin cushions and intricate mermaid like material in a fish scale design with rounded pieces of mixed material in blues, greens and gold threads overlay each other
Photo credit: Jacquie Manning

Creative producer of Remembering our roots: Cultural practices for community care & well-being. Nicole Barakat is a Kfarsghabi, Lebanese artist living on the lands and waters of the Gadigal. She works with deep listening and intuitive processes with intentions to transform the conditions of everyday life. Her artwork engages unconventional approaches to art-making, creating intricate works that embody the love and patience characteristic of traditional textile practices. Nicole’s practice is rooted in re-membering and re-gathering her ancestral knowing, including coffee divination and more recently working with plants and flower essences for community care.

Nicole undertook an artist residency in Bethlehem, Palestine in 2010 and was recently in residence, through Creative Australia, at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France in 2023.
Nicole completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Craft Arts) in Textiles in 2002 with first class honours at the University of NSW Art & Design.

Peter Cooley I CEO First Hand Solutions Aboriginal Corporation I Indigigrow
Photo of Peter Cooley outside wearing a floppy material Indigigrow hat, he holds in his hands a native plant that has ruler length fronds

Peter is a proud Bidjigal man who grew up in the Aboriginal community at La Perouse in Sydney’s south and is a Co-Founder and CEO of First Hand Solutions Aboriginal Corporation (FHS). He has spoken at a number of local & international conferences and been the recipient of some significant awards for his work in Aboriginal communities. He graduated from a postgraduate degree in Social Impact from the Centre for Social Impact at the University of NSW in 2015.

FHS was established to build empowered, resilient Indigenous people & communities through cultural reconnection, education, employment and enterprise. FHS combines social innovation, cultural protection, education and social enterprises to close the gap for Indigenous people.
FHS created successful social enterprises such as the National Indigenous Art Fair, IndigiGrow and the Blak Markets.
Peter also co-founded the National Indigenous Bushfood Symposium with Sarah Martin which was attended by 120 Aboriginal people from around Australia and led to the creation of First Nations Bushfood & Botanical Alliance Australia which is now the peak Indigenous Bushfood & Botanical body in Australia.

Dhawundi | Maree Walford (Gamilaraay/Yuwalaraay)
Photo of a woven circular shape made with electric green, purple, pink and orange - it lies on a bed of green raffia strands

My name is Maree Walford, I am a proud Gamilaraay/Yuwalaraay woman from Lightning Ridge. Dhawundi means ‘from the land’ in Gamilaraay. Dhawundi offers home and decor products and workshops that are influenced and inspired from my traditional homelands and the land I live on now, Darkinjung country.

Zeina Iaali
Photo of a drawwn artwork using fine tip black pen on white paper, the shape is circular with a central focal point
Photo credit: Document Photography

Zeina Iaali’s art practice revolves around the meditative act of repetition - a process that transforms into both a ritual and a quiet form of resistance. Through intricate illustrations and sculptural works, she delves into the concept of the nafs (self), exploring the purification of the mind as a means to reconnect with personal and ancestral histories.

Prince Aydin
Photo of artist Prince peeking though a piece of ripped paper, the photo is black and white and only visible is their eye, nose and a fingers
Photo credit: Jacquie Manning

Prince is an interdisciplinary artist, primary school teacher, artist educator and community facilitator born, raised and educated on unceded Gadigal and Darug Country. As a teacher & educator, Prince thinks of their pedagogical practice as art and activism, striving to elicit critical thinking, and to bring social, political, and environmental discussions into the realm of artistic practice and the classroom.

Maissa Alameddine
Photo of Maissa wearing an open throbe like jacket with gold and white stripes, Maissa has a large plate of fresh green outstretched grape vine leaves lying on top on each other, out of focus in the background a man sists at a table he wears a black beret and dark glasses
Photo credit: Odeesho Legacy Studios

Maissa Alameddine is a Lebanese-Tripolitan interdisciplinary artist and vocalist working to find a way back home. Maissa is convinced that migration is a chronic injury which needs a pain management plan. She sometimes sings for healing and sometimes to scream as a way to reject and resist a submissive migratory bird song. Her work is an invitation to those close in and a reach out to those on the margin of in. In film, photography, song and story she tries to unpack inheritance and transference of heritage in the complexity of the diasporic experiences of displacement and living between cultures.

DJ Gemma

Photo of a left hand with many silver rings on pinky through to middle finger, the hand is outstretched, The hand has bracelets around the wrist, palestinian flag, wooden round beads and leather

DJ Gemma has been inspiring audiences and making people dance for over thirty-five years. She utilises her position to expose non-Western perceptions of sound and to subvert the limitations of mainstream dance music. Gemma creates atmospheres with music that transcend the body and move energies. Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/mono-brow

Accessibility information

LQBTIQ+ safer space
Culturally safer space
Hall features accessible toilet
Hall is wheelchair accessible
Accessible parking

Transport and parking

Train – 15-minute walk from Stanmore train station
Bus – 428 stops by the Centre entry gates on Addison Road
Cycle - we have bike racks in front of the Food Pantry on the far side of the carpark
Parking - Monday to Saturday – Free

Raffaela Cavadini (She/Her) Producer Creative Programs p +61 2 9335 2293 e Raffaela.Cavadini@innerwest.nsw.gov.au m 0466 714 195 We acknowledge that this land area traditionally belonged to the Gadigal and Wangal peoples of the Sydney Basin.