What are the challenges involved in organising a seed commons and making seeds accessible? Established in 2019, The Glasgow Seed Library, based at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, is a new seed commons, offering the residents of Glasgow free access to organic, open-pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds.

The project this award supports will investigate how innovative cataloguing processes could improve accessibility and engagement with the seed library. Through participatory research with community seed savers, the group will explore better ways to collect and collate the type of data people accessing the library would find helpful and see how reorganising the library with this new information would increase participation.

The project will then present the research findings through a pilot’ seed catalogue’. Follow on funding could then be sought to implement further changes in the library and how it catalogues seeds.

Seed Librarian Rowan Lear said, “We’re so excited to work with researcher Joss Allen to creatively reimagine a seed catalogue for Glasgow Seed Library, supported by the RSE and Williamson Trust funding. Working closely with local seed savers, we hope to learn more about the plants being grown in the city, the people who grow them, and how to support and sustain a flourishing seed commons.”