unfinishing

Kevin Frediani is the Curator of the University of Dundee Botanic Garden. Before that, he’s had a hugely varied career – to name just a couple of his roles, he’s managed the Amsterdam botanic garden and was the first curator or plants at London Zoo. The many rewards he’s received for his work include a Chelsea Flower Show gold medal.

We talk about the gorilla exhibit that he took to Chelsea, the innovations Kevin made in vertical farming, and how gardeners often work for the benefit of future generations rather than their own time.

Kevin is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/KevinFrediani You can find out more about the botanic garden in Dundee here: https://www.dundee.ac.uk/botanic/

Some special thanks are due for this episode. First, to listener Helen Barker for suggesting that I should speak to a gardener. Second, to Katy Merrington, the cultural gardener at the Hepworth Art Gallery, and to Rebecca Slack from the Plant Network for putting me in touch with Kevin.

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If you have an unfinished project you’d like to talk about, email me, Emily Anderson at [email protected]. You can also follow me on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

NEXT EPISODE: Thursday 11th March

Brenton Clutterbuck is a writer, performance poet and educator from Far North Queensland in Australia.

His work covers the diverse topics of the underground music scene in Buenos Aires, and what he’s described as the “constructed chaos-worshipping religion Discordianism”.

His unfinished project is a creative written response to Kanye West’s 2013 album Yeezus. Brenton draws on the album's themes and unusual style to use it as a source of empowerment.

Brenton also treats us to some of his funny and insightful performance poetry...and we talk about why he takes his laptop to the beach.

You can find out more about Brenton's work by following him on Twitter @ChasingEris or by looking at his website: https://brentonclutterbuck.weebly.com/

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If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected]. You can also follow me on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

Sarah Geissler is a fashion historian and writer. She researches costume, homemade clothing, and communities of dress, including cosplay and historical costuming. She also makes her own clothes and has worked as a costume volunteer at Beamish Museum. She researched and co-curated the exhibition ‘Dressing the Decades: 85 years of Visitor Clothing’ at Preston Manor, Brighton. She has previously been a copywriter in luxury fashion, a catwalk video archive annotator, and old style photographer.

In Summer 2020 Sarah was one of the volunteers who engaged in a mammoth effort to sew scrubs for the NHS. Her unfinished project is a quilt made from the offcuts. We talk about how it was useful to have something to do with your hands, about why quilts are particularly emotional objects, and about when you should put projects on the naughty step.

Sarah also has fascinating things to say about what you can find out about people just by looking at their clothes…

Sarah can be found on Instagram at @sarahmary.gee, or on LinkedIn at Sarah-Mary Geissler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-mary-geissler-866431108/

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Subscribe to Unfinished/Unpublished on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/1ez2Ji4YEwBSm7uzpZ5nzC

Subscribe on iTunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unfinished-unpublished/id1546490983

Subscribe on other platforms here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson

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Unfinished/Unpublished celebrates creative projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the abandoned corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes.

If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you’d like to talk about, email me at [email protected]

Or, follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrueBagglerag

This is a special, one-off recording in which four storytellers describe their experiences of coming to the UK as refugees and asylum seekers. I produced it for the Comfrey Project, a charity in Gateshead offering refugees and asylum seekers support and a space in which to garden. The storytellers developed their narratives in workshops run by Sail Creative in 2020.

First broadcast 3rd December 2020.