The New Urban Green

‘The New Urban Green’ is a celebration of the tucked away, the overlooked and the greened-up edges of our urban areas captured over 10 years by the photographer Jane Sebire and writer Caroline Beck. Gardens within prisons; asylum seekers growing home tastes from abroad on northern allotments; canals transformed into public parks; housing estates becoming English meadows – small, extraordinary delights in ordinary places cared for by visionaries, enthusiasts and the simply curious. It grows out of a personal love of these spaces by both Jane and Caroline who says of the exhibition: “I’ve come to see through working with Jane and writing about these much loved green fringes of our towns and cities that my whole life has been shaped by such places. As a young girl I sought them out as a cure for the desolate landscape in which I grew up where all wildflowers were branded as weeds, to be derided and destroyed. As an adult I’ve spent a good deal of my professional life discovering these anarchic Edens and trying to turn their quirky beauty into words.”