LION functions as an ecosystem builder, creating opportunities for Black and People of Colour (BPOC) to connect with the land, with nature and with each other. We hold workshops and events for BPOC, to skill-share, strategise and build networks of mutual aid and solidarity.
We work to change the narrative around land and race in Britain, to shed light on the inequalities BPOC face and to reconnect us with ancestral ways of stewarding and healing with the land. By sharing the stories of Black Landworkers and Landworkers of Colour, we seek to empower BPOC in issues around food growing, the environment, and sustainability.
Reparations and redistribution of resources to those of us who have been dispossessed and have unequal access to land is at the heart of how we work. In this, we particularly call on our allies and accomplices to resource, support and take action for reparations. We also work with and to support landworker’s movements for fair wages and working conditions, which exclude and affect BPOC in land work.
In our collective, we work actively to interrogate and disrupt systems of power. It is important to us that this includes our internal processes and policies, and that these reflect our values of anti-capitalism, racial justice and collective care. In practice, this means that we work non-hierarchically and make decisions based on consensus to develop ways of working together that support us all. More broadly, we are committed to relearning decolonial systems of knowledge which can teach us ways to live in right relationship with the land and each other.