Learning to Grow, Learning to Grieve: Growing Futures

A soft score is a flexible set of instructions or guidelines for collective action. Rather than prescribing a fixed outcome, each score remains responsive to the evolving dynamics of those involved, including not only people but also plants and other more-than-human participants. Each score connects regenerative soil tending and food-growing practices with meditations on loss, asking: How do we mourn while building futures? 

Over the course of the season, those taking part have harvested young plants in the early morning, crushed fresh garlic for fermentation, and tended to the cultivation, preservation, and multiplication of indigenous microorganisms. These practices have contributed to the preparation of microbe-rich soil amendments for the regenerative garden beds. At the same time, the shared work has created space to name ecological grief and attend to the emotions that arise through close engagement with damaged and changing environments.

The soft scores have brought together experimental drawing and writing, exploratory walks, deep sensing practices, engagement with foraged plants and soil, and collective processes of harvesting, fermentation, transformation, and sharing food. Through these encounters, the garden has become a space for attending to loss while also practicing forms of collective care and regeneration. 

The Final Gathering 

The final gathering of the 2026 season will be held as a public event in the living room of Times in Common, Spore's participatory space.  

The event will begin with a presentation of Learning to Grow, Learning to Grieve. Michelle Teran will introduce the research project and share documentation of the various soft scores that have been created in the regenerative garden throughout the growing season of 2026. 

The texts from each soft score, together with image documentation, are collected in the publication Learning to Grow, Learning to Grieve: Soft Scores, which is currently on display in the Times in Common exhibition space.

We will then move together into the regenerative garden, where everyone will be invited to distribute the microbe-rich soil amendment across the garden beds. This final collective action returns the work of the season to the soil. By tending to the garden's living conditions and preparing it for the next season, we make a small contribution to regeneration, helping to grow a shared future. 

This event is part of the series Planting Communities – Learning to Grow, Learning to Grieve.