简体中文：

On April 11th 2025 in celebration of ‘People, Planet, Purpose week we held a special Intergenerational Tree Story workshop for parents at ISB school. This workshop explored family tree stories of identity,  values and cultural references. Parents chose a significant word or words that has meaning for their family and then later  surrounded this word by leaf prints. 

 

 

 

 

 

For this workshop alongside these values we explored materiality and the use homemade plant based pigments including pomegranate, avocado and beetroot, these pigments were mixed with a binder from the acacia tree ( gum Arabic) and a drop of clove bud oil to prevent fungal and bacterial growth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Papers were also soaked in different mordants such as soy milk and Alum acetate  to help bind with the plant fibres in the cotton paper and to keep the pigments stable.

I have heard Beetroot is a particularly fugitive colour but after placing a colour sampler on a windowsill in sunlight for 2 weeks it showed insignificant change or deterioration on mordanted paper. 

Pigments in the pallettes included Saffron (bright orange but on paper bright yellow) pomengranate (looks like a tea colour in the palette and on paper a beautiful yellow green) curcumin a deep yellow , blue spirulina, beetroot red and coffee.

The pigments were painted on different leaves and then pressed into the paper, different leaves picked up the colours and transferred them with varying detail , and these qualities were discovered and worked with in versatile and creative ways.

 

Different parents shared their stories with the larger group. One mother spoke of her father gifting her a wish or blessing , a  set of words to carry her through life.  The words were : Self belief , self respect, inner strength and stand firm on your own feet, this person then passed these words to her own daughter who is a student at the school .

 

A huge thank you to all the parents who joined in this activity, to all at ISB,  the sustainability and environmental department at ISB particularly Paola Alonso and Kathlyn Paananen for facilitating and supporting this event and to the art department Joseph Steward and Yvette Stride and to the IB students who facilitated and helped clean up after the event.