Tools for Quiet Activism: Stephanie Doddridge

In this new exhibition by local artist Stephanie Doddridge, inside the Museum of Economic Botany, visitors will see gardening as a powerful form of everyday action.

Artist Stephanie Doddridge is drawn to gardens as a way of understanding how humans relate to nature. Her life revolves around the garden: a passionate home gardener, fresh produce chef, and an artist constantly experimenting with plants as a medium.  

Stephanie spent time working with Bio.R, a grassroots environmental organisation that restores native habitats in heavily cleared land.  On Bio.R’s sites, Stephanie discovered a hands-on way of learning through gardening, tending and remediating. Small, repeated acts on degraded land became a kind of ‘quiet activism’, rejecting extractive ways of interacting with nature and supporting mutual care between people and country.  

In Tools for Quiet Activism, Stephanie has created a suite of compostable garden tools. Crafted from bioplastics born out of messy experiments in her studio kitchen, the tools are also embedded with seeds so that they don’t just return to the earth, but usher in new life.  

Stephanie’s thoughtful tools highlight how lasting environmental change grows from ongoing, connected actions, encouraging us all to take part in small, shared acts of care over time.