the apothecary network

A project exploring how creative tech can play a part in climate action focused on herbalism and community.

the apothecary network uses creative tech to share knowledge to grow your own decolonial community apothecaries. A prototype low-tech webapp that aims to be a meeting place between plants and people built on a radically small AI robot powered by the sun. We welcome all to be guests in a space created for and by Black, Brown, racialised and diaspora communities. We centre collective care and a joyful connection with nature honouring our ancestral knowledge and intuitive practices.

the apothecary network app will seek to understand how the climate crisis has impacted your community and consider how much green space (whatever that means to you) that you have access to.

The low-tech webapp will then offer plants allies which you can build a relationship with that will allow you to connect with the natural world while creating remedies and medicines to soothe some of the impacts of climate injustice within your community.

This prototype will be based upon plants and knowledge researched by herbalist Zoe Palmer and afrofuturist apothecary.

It will initially centre eight plant allies that have been selected for their ease of growth, medicinal properties and historical link to the struggles within diaspora communities.

Our long term aim is to create a community around this ancestral knowledge and build a relationship of reciprocity with the land and each other. This includes seed libraries, community medicine-making workshops and knowledge sharing.

Creative Team

Values and Principles

the apothecary network was created to honour the ancestral knowledge, intuitive practices and lived experiences of racialised and diaspora communities. It is a prototype that allows people to come together to combat climate injustice.

However, we want this to be open to everyone but there are a certain set of principles and values that we used to create the app that we would like our users to consider when using our prototype.

We ask people to remember that this is a space for Black and Brown communities to heal, and you are a guest in this space. Read our full Values and Principles statement.

Wireframe Prototype

In the first phase of this project, we built an interactive prototype using Figma - a collaborative wireframing design tool. This process included creating a user experience flowchart, conditional logic mapping as well as wire mapping our prototype design pages.

The prototype was built by Zai Builds.

Illustrations by Javie Huxley

For the apothecary network, our designer created individual illustrations of the plant allies that we built our prototype around.

Our aim was to create something that was both beautiful and functional as a means to identify plants.

We believe that these illustrations centre an experience of intuition and joy that are not always found with the usual clinic botanical photos.

Please visit @javhux for more.

Collective Herbalism Workshop

Acknowledgements

This prototype project was inspired by Black Earth: Resistance, Anti-Racism and the Environment by tiata fahodzi and is intended to be a natural extension.

Black Earth was a research project encompassing workshops, nature walks, artist commissions and Green Care Packages for members of the local communities in Watford and the South East, and the Bristol and Bath regions. It was during this project that the seed for the apothecary network was planted and, with the generous permission and support from tiata fahodzi, that seed has continued to grow.

Special thanks to those who supported, consulted and contributed to this prototype project: Chinonyerem Odimba, Solidarity Apothecary, Nicole Rose, Joel Gethin Lewis and Comuzi.