Elm Tree Farm is a working farm in Stapleton providing support and training to adults with learning disabilities and autism. Photographer Esther May Campbell spent a year documenting it.
Photographs and words: Esther May Campbell
Elm Tree Farm nourishes and practices what it means to be human: community, tending, taking time, reflecting, feeling the weather and the soil, knowing your land, laughing, singing, weeping, touching, proximity to birth and death. This is crucial. To stop and take care of one another and our surroundings is now a radical act of defiance in a culture that promotes qualities of force, greed, superiority and separateness.
“The photographs capture moments that can be hard to appreciate, or even recognise. People with learning disabilities are a marginalised, underrepresented group, but they must show the multiple different faces of their experiences – sadness and isolation, community and joy.
“There’s one man deep in the earth, picking vegetables, so immersed he’s sinking into his surroundings. There are portraits of older folk, many of whom spent their formative years in institutions, and the ghosts of their experiences can still be felt. People on our farm, who are so used to being cared for, become carers themselves – of plants, animals, tools and one another. This is powerful role reversal. It brings growth and healing.”
Lisa Allen, horticultural support worker
The images on these pages are available in the limited-edition book Water Salad on Monday; a collection of textural black and white photographs that reveal how those who are often cared for by others, become carers themselves.
Support the journalism Bristol needs.
Thanks to the 2,000+ members who support the Cable, our in-depth journalism is free for everyone. Together, we empower readers with independent and investigative local reporting. Join us and be a part of Bristol’s reader-owned media cooperative.
Join the Cable
Film Black History Month Banner Home Page Edition 23
Watch: Vulnerability, escapism and creativity, my experiences of lockdown as a young Bristolian
Lockdown left young people in the city feeling stranded, dislocated from their usual connections. Here, a young aspiring writer reflects on school, writing and the new sense of self-confidence that grew over those months
City Banner Home Page Film
Watch: The struggle for the future of Britain’s best street
A furore has kicked off over proposals to pedestrianise one of Bristol's most iconic streets, St Marks Road, with famous shop Sweetmart threatening to leave! Easton native Neil Maggs investigates whats going on behind the headlines.
Banner Home Page Film
Watch: Resilience – An uplifting story of young mums on one of the UK’s oldest council estates
A short documentary of young mums overcoming stigma through friendship on one of the UK's oldest council estates, Hillfields in Bristol.
Podcast
Listen: When football meets anti-fascism – The Easton Cowgirls and Cowboys
Terry and Duke sit down with Kev and Sensi from Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls, to discuss the origins of this historic club, extraordinary oversees trips and how they mix activism and sport.
Read more from this edition.
