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Years ago I did a creative writing project in a Traveller site in North West London. It was with a theatre who had worked with community members on all sorts of creative projects. I was invited to run some workshops, so each week, I went in for a few hours to work with a bunch of funny, lively kids. We played games, wrote poems and at the end of the term we did that classic thing of sharing a giant box of celebrations, you know, with everyone fighting over the Maltesers one.听听

I鈥檓 not gonna lie, up until this point,听 I was pretty ignorant about the people I was working with. Public depictions of Travellers are sensational, salacious and to be honest, cruel. My view was shaped by the one-dimensional caricatures that I鈥檇 been exposed to.听

I鈥檇 never visited a Traveller site before and my first impression of the area was how polluted it was. It was right next to an A road, in the middle of an industrial area. I didn鈥檛 see any residential streets, but I did see a lot of lorries. The noise from the road was overwhelming.听听

When I started thinking about who does and who doesn鈥檛 have access to green space, I thought back to the Traveller community members, especially the kids, that I鈥檇 worked with all those years ago. I wondered if they ever felt locked out of nature?听听听听听听

This podcast is about how our status in society impacts our relationship to nature. In this episode I hear from three people who identify as Traveller, who鈥檒l tell me about their connection to nature and the land and how its affected by where they live.听

I鈥檓 Talia Randall and you鈥檙e listening to Blossom Trees and Burnt out Cars, the podcast where I dig beneath the surface and chat with the people who are opening up nature to everyone.听听

Episode 2: Traveller communities: severed from the land听听听

In this episode I chat with three people, Josie O Driscoll who runs a charity called GATE which works to improve the quality of life for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. I also speak with Emma and Joseph - who prefer that I only use their first names听

We met on a hot Thursday in May, on a council run Traveller site on the outskirts of London.听听

If you don鈥檛 know where you鈥檙e going the neighbourhood can be tricky to find so we met behind a garage along the dual carriageway. I hopped in the back of Josie鈥檚 car and we crawled past a roadside memorial to a Traveller man. The marshlands were close by and early burst of elderflower spilled over the edges of the kerb. Just before the turn off into the small close where the site is there was a beautiful horse in a field, chomping on the grass, electricity pylons in the distance.听

The site was small and tidy with static caravans and day rooms.听听

We sat down with a cuppa and I wanted to ask this key question: When nature is so important to you, yet you live in places that are cut off from it, what happens, what鈥檚 the impact?听

You鈥檒l hear from Josie but first from Emma听听

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My grandmother. She lives through Kent there and even though we are quite close to the road where she lives - at one side of her is a lorry depot.鈥疭o she's got lorries coming in all like all day, all night. So she's got the pollution of that and about probably seven feet away from where she, sleeps it's a motorway.You look through the fence and that's just that's the motorway. So she's got the pollution from the motorway itself.鈥疭he's got the pollution from the lorry depot. It's the noise pollution. She's a bit worser off than what we are really and like. She has no greenery there. All it is, is complete concrete.鈥�听

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TALIA: How does that affect day-to-day life?鈥�听

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JOSIE: Well, it definitely affects health. I would say, and it affects even your mental health. I would say, because coming from families who historically travelled and lived off the land.鈥� And we have a real connection to land, and to openness - we're outside people.鈥�听

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And even when travellers are forced into housing, bricks and mortar, uhm, they have an aversion to bricks and mortar, a lot of them. And it causes stress and anxiety. And we know that some of the caravan sites that are under fly overs, the amount of air pollution that people suffer, it causes health problems and we never had those health problems many years ago when we were on the land. Of course we'd have sicknesses and things like that, but not as much as today where we've been shoved into inappropriate spaces.鈥�听

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TALIA: Being torn away from nature 鈥� and as Josie said 鈥� being shoved onto inappropriate spaces. The site where we chatted is situated by a busy A road. a 2013 study carried out for the mayor Indicated that this road was London鈥檚 most polluted road听

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And unfortunately, this type of location is fairly typical of where many Travellers sites have been situated in England. Recent research by journalist Katharine Quarmby and the Byline times exposed that Traveller sites, specifically sites that are run by local authorities are 鈥渞outinely placed in risky locations鈥� close to hazards like 鈥渕otorways, railway lines, sewage plants, refuse centres鈥� the list goes on. Here鈥檚 Josie giving me more detail about this and how it affects Traveller communities.听听

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JOSIE:鈥疘 would say that,this site you can see some greenery around it. You have the trees and what you have. But there are sites that you go into and they're just concrete. We call them concrete jungles and you won't see any greenery or you won't see any form of nature around it. I know the families here on this site they have made the site lovely. They've put what they can here. Like if you look at some of the plots here, you'll see artificial trees and things like that. It's just that connection with nature and trees, and it's a historical connexion.鈥�听

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Because travellers were always used to the land, lived off the land.鈥疉nd we were really self sufficient.鈥疉nd never kind of took anything from the land that we didn't need.鈥疘 think that people don't understand or realise how connected we are, how connected that travelling people are to nature.鈥疘t's a feeling that we have for.鈥疦ature, so the outdoors degrade the great outdoors as people call them. We are really outdoor people鈥疉nd we don't like to be closed in. A lot of our people are claustrophobic.鈥疉nd because they're so used to being in the in the outside world, in the outdoors.鈥�听

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TALIA:We don鈥檛 realise how connected Traveller cultures and histories are to nature. I think this is really interesting point, especially as Travellers are so often depicted as a threat to nature.听

Given how this nature connection has been severed by an A road, I asked if there were specific nature memories that felt important, or particular plant connections. You鈥檒l hear Josie in a minute, but first from Emma听

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EMMA: When I was little I (laughter) I used to make perfume out the flowers. We use to collect all the flowers and we thought he was making perfume, but obviously we wasn't.鈥疊ut I used to remember like, picking flowers and making chains, chains like necklaces and bracelets and stuff like.鈥�听

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TALIA: Josie, so do you have like a particular like plant or like bit of nature that you have, like a particular memory of?鈥�听

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JOSIE: Rose hips. Because that's what we used to use for cough medicines and there was other things that went into it, but even I have lost some of the recipes now. But we used to use the Rose hips I remember for cough medicine.鈥�听

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TALIA: And I suppose these things don't get recorded, it's oral history, isn't it. Like with so many different cultures. Like I'm I've got Jewish background so they were kind of, not nomadic in the same way that travellers were, but moved a lot.鈥疭o a lot of that history isn't written down, like the recipes, the food recipes that my grandma would make. She would never听 write down measurements. She would always just be like, 鈥榦h, it's just handful of this鈥櫶�

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EMMA: Yeah,听听

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JOSIE: yeah, we never measured anything.听听

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TALIA: Luckily I got the same size hands and my grandma. One handfuls different to the other, isn't it?鈥�听

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TALIA: Imagine if I did have smaller hands than my grandma though, I wouldn鈥檛 be able to make any of the same things and that feeling makes me want to write everything down super quick before I lose it from my memory. That鈥檚 the thing with a lot of oral cultures isn鈥檛 it - we can lose a lot of history.听听

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And for Emma, Joseph and Josie I wonder if that feeling is heightened听

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TALIA: The big thing I think maybe isn't talked about a lot is the lack of, I guess, cultural expression, and I see you nodding so.鈥疘'm thinking about this historic cultural link to nature, to the land, to travelling that Traveller culture has, and if you can't do that on the site where you live. That must have like a deeper impact, right? What? What do you think about that?鈥�听

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JOSIE: I think it has a huge impact.鈥痀ou're used to openness and outside cooking, outside on a fire, and that's all we ever did years ago. We didn't have any inside cookers around like that. We had to use what we had.鈥�听

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And I think Travellers have a very low environmental impact.鈥疶hey use the land for what they need.鈥疉nd especially around health.鈥疘 know that years ago you would never go and see a doctor.鈥痀ou'd have to have herbal remedies or natural remedies that you'd use for ailments. Say for things that we'd have dock leaves and we'd use chestnut bark, or we'd use, uh elderflowers for chests. We had all different kinds of cures. Our own cures, which we use from nature and the land, and that's lacking now, that's been lost.听

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JOSEPH: Things like that do get lost throughout the generations and obviously a few generations ago, as mentioned, things were a lot different. People used to live more in the open, so they had access to things like that.鈥�听

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EMMA: You know what? It's just I think for my children they don't know what I used to.鈥�听

Know when I was younger and I would love them to know the experiences I had when I was younger, even to know what I know.鈥疊ut I would just like the culture to stay the way it is and just go on through generations instead of being wiped out 'cause it's getting smaller and smaller now you know.鈥�听

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JOSIE: And I think as well for us, for travellers, religion has a big part of it. We believe in the power of water.鈥疭o like holy wells in Ireland, we visit them a lot and we have a real belief that there's healing powers in that water.鈥疶hey might be old wives tales, but it's our beliefs that if you use the water from some of these holy wells that your hair will grow and you'll have beautiful skin.鈥疘t's a real belief that people have and they go miles and miles to visit these wells.鈥�听

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TALIA: I love some of that.鈥疢y skin could do with a bit of a touch up听

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JOSIE: But we did have remedies for skin and for everything we had, balms do you call it? That would make up from berries and things like that that. We've had it for everything.鈥疐or cures for warts.鈥疷h, cures for diabetes.鈥痷h, nettle stings or whatever we all had. We had all our own cures that came from herbs or nature or whatever?鈥疎ven for nappy rashes.鈥�听

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EMMA: Yeah, definitely. Josie鈥檚 right because my grandmothers still alive. She's 86 now and if I if I had a problem to down to anything like Josie is saying.鈥疘f I rang her, she'd tell me what to put on that.鈥疻ithout even having to go to q pharmacist.鈥疻hat I need to have?鈥痀ou know what's best for a cough mixture. She can do all that.鈥�听

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JOSIE: And that's the sad part that's been lost.鈥�听

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TALIA:听听

Its upsetting to hear about this loss, as travelling becomes harder and as the sites where communities live are often devoid of nature and plant life. Its the feeling that you aren鈥檛 able to fully express the part of your culture that is so bound up in nature.听听

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And of course I鈥檓 not saying that there is one singular Traveller culture, or one singular community. Even though Gypsies, Roma and Travellers are often grouped together, these three words stand for lots of different people, different communities and different ethnic groups. Even though there will be certain cultural things in common, there are many, many differences. I don鈥檛 want to lump everyone in the same box听

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And look I鈥檒l be honest with you I was 鈥� and still am - a bit nervous about this episode. I鈥檓 not an authority on this topic and I鈥檓 not trying to be some expert, or be a saviour. I鈥檝e been worried about getting the words right, getting the facts straight because I don鈥檛 want to put more misinformation out there and exposure anyone to more hate. Its very possible that despite trying I鈥檝e got something wrong.听

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But I feel really strongly that everyone should have equal access to nature and that鈥檚 why I听 wanted to hear from Joseph, Emma and Josie and find what they thought about all the things I鈥檝e been thinking about. What is their relationship with nature like? Do they feel connected or locked out?听听听

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I asked them what happens when they go outside into public nature, maybe for a group forage, or a family picnic - what reception do they get?听

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JOSIE: We're large, extended families, and if there was a crowd of us.鈥疭ay sitting down by the canals or the by the water sides we do get looks.鈥疘 have to say that people will look at you. I know that where I live we have the Lea Valley park and people go down there and have barbecues. And sometimes travelling children when they get out and they're a bit boisterous and can be loud at times, but that's a part of who they are, and people often take that for aggression.鈥�听

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Yeah, it's definitely a stereotype and it really does happen and you feel it. People sometimes don't have to say anything.鈥疘t's just the way they look at you.鈥疉s some people have a fear through what they read through the media, and what they see. They've never probably met a Gypsy or Traveller, but it's just what they hear about Gypsies. It is that stereotype.鈥�听

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EMMA: So we try our best to make these people feel comfortable around us, to let us let them know where we are and we ain't these people that they think we are.鈥疭o that's what we try to do.鈥疊ut then I suppose some people can get it into their mind, like we are just normal people.鈥疻ell, then, obviously like there's different opinions on everybody, but it is a shame really that Gypsies and Travellers have to be classed in the same way. You know there's good and bad in everybody, wherever you go.鈥疉nd I don't think everyone should be classed if one person does one thing wrong. Why does it mean the whole lot's got to suffer.鈥�听

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JOSEPH: I mean, I think people are just scared of difference to be honest with you.鈥疶hat comes with a lot of things really, though, doesn't it?鈥�听

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JOSIE: I think that racism is a big factor. There's intergenerational trauma. There's historic trauma, a lot of it is now manifesting itself in our younger generation. Our suicide rates are seven to eight times higher than the national average. When you look at what people go through.鈥疘 think that they pass it down through the generations and it comes out in the younger generations.鈥�听

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TALIA: That is such a shocking statistic. When Josie said it I was totally taken aback. This figure is from a study in Ireland and it showed that suicide is most common in young Traveller men. There are ways to find healing and, off mic, in our debrief, Josie told me a story about a someone she knows, also a Traveller, who lost her son to suicide. In her grief, she created a memorial garden on the site where she lives. A place where the young people can find a sense of wellbeing, can play and crucially connect with nature in a safe environment where they aren鈥檛 going to experience some of the prejudices they might face in a public park. I know its just a small garden but in places where connection to nature is so limited this feel actually quite powerful especially because being nature can have such healing affect.听听

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TALIA: Because we know that being in nature and stuff has a recorded impact, positive impact on your wellbeing. If you have all of these pressures and stereotypes and entry refusal, then if you can't then go and find a safe space in nature to kind of let some of that go. It's gonna squeeze the thing that's already really tight.鈥�听

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JOSIE: And it does.鈥疘 say to my kids if I'm upset I'm going to the mountains, that's what I always say to them, I'm off to the mountains.鈥�听

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TALIA: You've got mountains in Hertfordshire?听听

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JOSIE But I do find that if I do get stressed just leave me walk down there, just leave me be and I'd be fine. It's the feeling you get when you're out in the open and out in nature.鈥�听

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TALIA: In terms of improving that connection that Travellers can have to nature or ways to make Travellers feel more comfortable in nature spaces, what can be done to help that?鈥�听

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JOSIE: Well, for me it would be, if you look around all of the UK or Britain, all of the traditional stopping places have been closed up.鈥疧pen up the common lands. I'd say 90% of the land has no, you haven't got public access on it.鈥疧pen up the common lands. Its there for people, the land is for everybody to enjoy. For me, I don't think that anybody has a right to tell you not to go on green spaces. It should be there for everybody to enjoy. I think for everybody, not just for Gypsies and Travellers, they should have a right to live the way they want to live.鈥疻hether that's on a boat, whether it's in a tent.鈥疉nd if it's in a caravan, or trailer as we call them, they should have a right to be nomad. If they want to be.鈥�听

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TALIA: Opening up the common land is a wider solution that Josie and others wants to see. I think that the community led projects like the memorial garden are part of the solution too.听听

Before I left that day, I wanted to ask about some of the things that need to be celebrated. So I asked Joseph, who you鈥檝e not heard from much yet, what he wanted to share听

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JOSEPH: I mean the fact of sites still being a thing.鈥疉nd the sort of idea of keeping close extended family together. That's definitely something to enjoy. And that's definitely something to celebrate, because I mean who's to say that it will continue to be like that in centuries to come? And like, after this generation, it may not even be a thing.鈥�听

You know there's thousands of Gypsies and Travellers that are waiting for sites, and they're sort of being put into housing, and that's not what they want, so.鈥疌elebrate what is left of it.听听

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Really put it this way, in my opinion, Gypsies and Travellers, a lot of them are very giving.鈥疉nd if you go on Facebook, if you go online, there's so many different documentaries and different articles about the good they've done, but again, it's not seen.鈥�听

I mean when this first issue about Ukraine occurred, there was a massive group of Gypsies, basically they gathered everything that was on the list of what the Ukrainians needed sort of things, for instance, tinned food, sleeping bags. They done that. That wasn't seen. That wasn't celebrated, you know?鈥�听

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TALIA: I think its interesting how keen Joseph was to share positive stories about Travellers, of which, of course there are many. Its that thing I said in the beginning I think, challenging that one dimensional caricature that is so prevalent. Its also not a coincide that Joseph works in communications for a Traveller charity and so of course he鈥檚 passionate about representation.听

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This key question we discussed - When nature is so important, yet you live in a place so cut off from it, what鈥檚 the impact? 鈥� This is a big question. And the things that will stay with me are the small details: Like Joseph鈥檚 passion to share good news stories about people in his community; Or Josie searching for the lost recipe for her Rosehip cough syrup; and Emma making perfume out the flowers as a kid. I also take with me the story of the memorial garden that Josie told me about 鈥� a community led solution where Traveller children can play.听

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Listening back to our chat though, I wonder if I put a bit too much weight on Josie, Emma and Joseph to represent myriad communities, groups and ethnicities. Maybe I鈥檝e done the thing of lumping people together. Its also possible that I鈥檓 overthinking the whole thing. I mean, I can be a bit an anxious overthinker. But regardless, in this situation, I am a gatekeeper, to people鈥檚 stories, and perhaps to whether or not they feel safe in a nature space. And you鈥檙e probably a gatekeeper as well听听

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How we relate to each other in greenspaces, its a reflection - of wider society, the power structures, the hierarchies. So maybe part of the solution that I can offer - and that maybe you can too - is holding up a mirror and seeing where it is that we each hold power.听

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In the next episode of Blossom Trees and Burnt Out Cars I鈥檒l be asking Who gets to be a nature writer? I鈥檒l听 be challenging the stereotypical image by speaking with nature writers who don鈥檛 fit the mould听听

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鈥淭weed jackets and, you know, the people who've got time. Got the time to just lament鈥�.鈥�听

鈥淲ell, it's a stereotype for a reason, because it's kind of true鈥�.鈥�听

鈥淭he question of who is a nature writer comes down to the question of what is nature?鈥澨�

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Join me as I dig beneath the surface and chat with the people who are opening up nature to everyone听

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Blossom Trees and Burnt Out Cars was written and produced by Talia Randall听

The researcher was Erica Mckoy听

The Technical Producer was Gayl Gordon and The production mentor was Anna Buckley听

Executive Producers were Leanne Alie and Khaliq Meer.听

This podcast was commissioned by Khaliq Meer at 大象传媒 Sounds Audio Lab.听

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If you鈥檝e been affected by any of the issues raised in this programme you can search 大象传媒 Actionline for help and support.听

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