About

The Circle of Soil is the second issue of the newspaper of Mustardseed Trust: a trust fund and incubator for projects building the Care Economy. In a care economy, people care for themselves, each other, and the planet. Ecosystems are restored, money systems serve the well-being and human relation systems cultivate partnerships rather than domination. The first edition of ‘The Care Revolution’ was an artistic collaboration which resulted in a printed newspaper, aiming to introduce the care economy. The second issue is another one out of four, each taking a deeper dive into each one of MT’s three focus areas and how they relate to the care economy. These ’pillars’ of the care economy are ecosystems, money systems, and human relationships systems.

The Circle of Soil, with the original working title of Soil, Soul & Society, looks at the care economy through the lens of “ecosystems” and its interphases with the other two pillars. It will portray how regenerative ecosystems cannot exist in a silo but are integrated into a larger paradigm where money systems are serving (planetary) well-being and people work in partnership systems to steward the earth. The newspaper serves as an inspiration to Mustardseed Trust’s existing and expanding network, and offers a space to highlight inspirational work of partners and artists.

THE CHALLENGE

• Diving into the complex subject matter and translating this to stories that are easily consumable for a wider public.
• Managing, planning, and budgeting a project from start to finish, including working with visual artists or the printing and sending of the newspaper.
• Extracting a storyline and main thread from an extensive amount of information and insights, connecting dots (projects) and details together.
• Using visual storytelling and artworks to connect and intertwine all messages, articles, and in-depth information.

Our solution

As creative project leads and content creators, the challenge was to start from scratch and deliver a wholesome product. We went through three different phases:

1) During the inspiration phase, we created a planning and budget, explored the topic, and drafted a creative concept plan as an outline. We established collaborations with a subject matter expert to review our progress and content, and a visual artist and designer to create the layout. We interviewed eight different partners of Mustardseed Trust who run inspiring projects working with ecosystem restoration or regenerative agriculture.

2) During the ideation phase we gathered, selected, and connected all insights to shape the storyline and the first article outlines. We had interactive brainstorming sessions with the visual artists to come up with the first sketches and page layouts. We used to live in symbiosis with nature. Ecological processes form the main thread that weaves through the existence of us and our surroundings. Rich populations of microorganisms living in our guts, the soils, and plants: exchanging natural currencies such as nutrients, carbon, and oxygen. Mutually beneficial “business deals”, where one’s waste is always food for the next. It makes us healthy, connected, and above all: it makes us and our natural environment one and the same. Living in the Anthropocene – the era where the planet is ruled by one dominant species: the human – we seem to have lost our symbiotic relationship with nature. Thinking we can bend and break the earth’s ecosystems, biodiversity and natural processes to meet our consumptional demands

3) During the implementation phase, we wrote the articles, created the artworks and page layouts, did final editing, and organised the printing and posting of the newspaper.