Hannah Fincham & Ross Bennett

Hello! You may have noticed we have changed our name. Our practice has been evolving over the last 10 years and it feels like the time to re-introduce ourselves. We are a multidisciplinary social making practice. We develop works, ideas, projects and objects, using our hands to think, communicate and collaborate. Our response to the world around us is to create projects that interrogate and replenish the personal, political and environmental challenges we observe. We do this work with groups, students, adults and just about anyone who is interested in connecting with a craft, wild and living foods, with their hands, and with others. We will also be sharing more of what comes out of our personal workshop. Objects of use and some of none from Ross. Materials that weave together into artifacts through basketry and other techniques from Hannah. And hopefully some that fuse our practices and making.

Our materials are usually found, grown, recycled or living. Ingredients scavenged or accumulated around an idea or location that feed into and help shape a personal or collective story. From local wild plants to create a vernacular spice rack for a library kitchen, to off-cuts from the manufacturing industries to create games. Previous projects include a city-wide fermentation project using bacteria to model community. Interacting with canal-side plants and ecology through meals, craft and play to inform linear-park proposals. Sausages as containers for joy, sandwiches as poetry and creative prompts.

The name Five Wise Hands is a reference to the song title by the inspirational and absurdist (and namesake to our son) Ivor Cutler, Five Wise Saws. We do not have five hands, we have 4 between the two of us, but sometimes Ivor might lend us his, or all the many people we find ourselves working with. All hands are wise hands. [images: a handful of hands from our projects so far]

Like a scoby hibernating in the fridge, Social Pickle hasn’t been producing much in the last year or so and you might be wondering what we’re up to! But things are bubbling again and you can expect some exciting activity to be announced very sooooon. With that come some big changes, including saying farewell to some of our directors who are moving on to other things. Social Pickle has officially been ‘alive’ in some capacity for over five years now. We’re so proud of the work it’s done, and the following that the project has amassed in this time, and incredibly grateful for the support of partners, participants, and organisations (and bacteria) that we’ve collaborated with. So whilst our lovely core members (who’ve put so much into Social Pickle over the last few years) step over into their new locations and projects we’d like to thank them but also know that we hold a little of their bacteria (essence) within the project as it goes forward. You can find the full announcement including individual goodbyes from Lucy, Hannah and Ross over on our substack, link in bio. Be sure to follow their onward journeys: @fivewisehands [Hannah and Ross] continue their creative collaborative practice from their new location in Kent. @night_toad [Lucy] is focusing on their own arts practice, making work from their Sheffield studio hedge [image 1: directors closing meeting 🥲 the rest: look at all the lovely things they did!]

The last three visually darned and rescued cashmere jumpers for sale, for your perusal. Details will be shared on stories xx

The first four visually darned and rescued cashmere jumpers up for adoption! Details will be shared in stories 💝

Craft works like this get so overlooked in charity shops etc, such elaborate cross stitch and lace! I found this table cloth for a couple £ and added my own embellishments as a gift. Wish I had time to sew a little scene into every square!! #embroidery #fibreart

I’ve been mending, co-designing with the moths and burns. Holes shaped and placed by use, to be worn all over again. These were all gifts and repairs for friends and relatives, but I have stitched up a load for sale which I will share soon 👀 #visiblemending #darning #sashiko #slowstitching

The Seasoning spice rack! Presented at the harvest home feast were the wild spice pots, fresh out the kiln and stuffed with our hand picked and processed herbs and spices. We love them! Although the project was about so much of the invisible stuff that builds and contributes to us becoming seasoned gatherers together, there is something very powerful in these physical vessels that hold our year of learning and sharing. As the seasons shift, there are endless shifting opportunities to interact with our local landscapes and bring them into our lives, co creating our community identities and stories with the land that we stand on. The community around Bootle Library and @neriordan and @gregoryherbertart ‘s Chopping Club came together to do this so beautifully this year, and their stories will forever be imprinted into these spice pots! Thank you @at.the.library_ for having me, thank you Niamh and Greg for being such inspiring collaborators, and thank you to everyone that contributed and took part and made the project what it was!

The Seasoning feast! And in the end we celebrate new beginnings. Everyone that has been involved with the project so far was invited to a Harvest Home feast, a culmination of the year and our new relationships with each other and the seasons. Bootle library transformed into a banquet hall with bookshelves for walls and library trollies for service carts. The debris of the winter garden strewn across the tables to peek through. We spiralled through the courses, each solely seasoned with our library wild spice rack, it was tasty and joyous. From herb bennett mulled sea buckthorn welcome drinks, to puffed tapioca crisps dusted with horseradish to top nettle dumplings and broth, to yarrow icecream, rose poached quince and dandelion biscuits, with much more inbetween! We had musical accompaniment by Georgia Harris, who generously wrote us a song for each of the seasons. And regular and stalwart member of the community Jean did a reading of the poem that got written as a seasoning itself, a flavour of the years flavours (see billboard post below). These offerings were important as throughout this project we’ve been thinking about where our relationship to the seasons sits within culture. It might seem like we are becoming insulated to the seasons as a mass population since moving away from being a largely agricultural society full of harvest rituals (the name harvest home is actually a reference to one of these). But we wanted with this project to actively weave the seasons into our cultural lives through the spices we flavour our food with, as well as through poetry and song and celebrations such as this. Thank you so much to everyone @at.the.library_ for making this such a beautifully collaborative event and to @minanihi for these amazing photos.

Winter Seasoning 🌨️ Last month we met for the grand finale of my residency @at.the.library_ Having tracked the flavours of the year, we found ourselves in winter for the final forage. We must now trust and follow our spicy plants to where they are retreating under the ground. This is the season of the roots, when they have drawn all their nutrients down into the darkness and are at their peak of heat and sweetness, just what we need in the cold months. Horseradish for sulfur, Wood Avens for sweet, Dandelion for bitter. Digging up roots also opens up interesting moral and legal considerations around plant care and land rights which we unearthed and discussed under a canopy of brollies. Ideas that we’ve been honing the more we spend time with our spicy species, guided by texts by the likes of Robin Wall Kimerer. With mud in our fingernails and bellies fuelled with fire cider it felt really special to gather together despite the weather and feel the accomplishment of having seen a project through the whole year together 😌 And what’s left at the end for us to put our hands to? Pots and pans, knives and mixing spoons! The alchemy of each of the seasons coming together in the kitchen, we experimented with a menu of wild spicy dishes to feast on, which deserves a post in its own right, up next!

Autumn Seasoning 🍁 We chose the end of August for our third instalment of Seasoning, the height of harvest time. A flush of ripe fruits and seeds meant it was time to get busy. Nutrients and flavour molecules that have now made their way through each stage of the plant’s growth have congregated in these little pods for picking, and seeds especially are where we typically find most of our classic spicy seasonings. We foraged hogweed and wild carrot amongst other seeds for their aromatics, while sea buckthorn and blackberries will bring the sour and the sweet. A long awaited for day of rain along the Crosby coastline reminded us the summer was coming to an end but I actually really enjoyed how it meant we huddled in and focussed. And anyway bright yellow Sea Buckthorn juice could cut through any fog which we drank with orange and thyme. For our making session we got our hands in the dirt that gives life to our spices by sculpting clay into pots. It was exciting to see our spice rack start to physically take shape, as we made storage vessels to keep our processed seasonings dry and safe. We learnt about slab building and adornment methods, generating the aesthetic character together for our seeds, berries and leaves to try and convey these flavours which most people would be unfamiliar with. An essential part of our lives, clay has been moulded and fired for over 30,000 years in order to preserve and transport food and water, as we explored in our literary reference from the Ashmolean Musem called ‘Around the world in 80 pots: the story of humanity told through beautiful ceramics’. It was on the surface of these ancient pots, vases, and dishes that humans placed some of their first decorative markings, communicating their story in a visual language that has transcended time and culture, and so we used ours as canvas to visually convey our experience of Seasoning so far. Kept refreshed by Greg’s hogweed, sea buckthorn and polenta cake! We’re looking forward now to the culmination of the project in the colder months. Thanks so much to everyone @at.the.library_ for making this happen! Photos by @gregoryherbertart and me 🫐