The Earth Sea Love Podcast

Sheree Mack
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Nature
  • Semiweekly

The Earth Sea Love Podcast is a podcast for and about women, feminine and non-binary people who are Black, Indigenous or a Person of Colour and their relationship with nature hosted by Sheree Mack. The Earth Sea Love Podcast is committed to exploring the experiences of women of colour with Mother Nature. We want to provide spaces where the hidden voices in the environmental/ conservation conversations can explore their relationship with the natural world.Inspired by time spent outdoors, we amplify the voices of women, feminine and non-binary people who are Black, Indigenous or a Person of Colour; our stories, conversations, interviews, photography, writing and artwork.We’ll be exploring our legacies, histories and memories which have had an influence and effect upon how we perceive ourselves within the natural world and environmental/ climate justice movements.

  1. 4d ago

    Resisting Capture with Kisha Bradley - Episode 088

    Hello and Welcome back to The Earth Sea Love Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sheree Mack, sharing with you another episode from our new series, Practicing Creative Fugitivity, which has been funded by Arts Council England. In this episode we are talking with Kisha Bradley,  who emigrated from the USA ( I think I say Kentucky in the podcast but it’s actually Indiana, my apologies) to Sheffield, England to found the arts and culture organisation Brightbox. In our conversation together, we talk about: * AI and stolen voices, and work * Fugitive Songs workshop and the Lomax archives * Imagining other futures through communal songs * Resisting Capture  * Kisha’s background and coming to Sheffield * Getting grounded in nature * Radical and Radicale * Pushing back against the system * A discussion around time * Kisha’s childhood * Fugitivity, abundance and time * The importance of imagination * bell hooks’ homeplace * non-human other * Mushroom the end of the world by Anna Tsing * Full of herself, ourselves * Black ‘v’ White education * Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times article around education. * Practicing care, being and fugitivity   Bio: Born and raised surrounded by the flat cornfields of Indiana, USA, in a chaotic home full of music, mischief and just the right amount of boredom to get creative, Kisha Bradley immigrated to Sheffield, England to be nestled by the hills of the Peak District. She founded the arts and culture organisation Brightbox, shaping local decision-making through artmaking. Seeking time and energy to sit with community knowledge, Kisha began her PhD at the University of Leeds in 2024 with the generous support of a White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities Studentship funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This research asks, "What are the enabling conditions for Black and brown artists living in Sheffield to pursue their creative practices?" For Kisha, escaping capture means taking time to sit on the porch with others, savouring a morning cup of coffee, and regular walking to stay connected with her local landscapes. The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk  This track is Are U Listening BY KETSA This series is funded by Arts Council England

  2. Oct 15

    Willingness to Being(s) with Yetzi Cortés Flores - Episode 087

    Hello and Welcome Welcome back to The Earth Sea Love Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sheree Mack. I do hope you are well and enjoying the colours of autumn. We are back with another episode in this special series sponsored by Arts Council England, Practicing Creative Fugitivity. In this episode we are talk with the wonderful Yetzi Cortés Flores, who’s work revolves around translation practices and the literary market. Our conversation covers such points of interest as: * Yetzi’s Mexican culture and heritage * Yetzi’s presence in Sheffield * Coming to the Practicing Creative Fugitivity project * The idea of fugitivity * Reading in Community * Reading Fugitive Feminism * Exploring the concept of non-human other * Spending time, energy, money and heart proving our humanity * {BEINGS} * Ambivalence  * Taking up Space and Centring self  * Ai Weiwei Button Up Exhibition  * How to escape from ideology * Willingness to be vulnerable  Bio Yetzi Cortés Flores is a {being} born in Mexico who now lives in Sheffield, England. She reads, writes and translates. She is completing a MA degree in Translation at the University of Birmingham. She studied her BA in English literature in UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.) At the same time, she works in a marketing company as costumer service agent, a job that grants her stability to pursue her creative interests.  Her work revolves around translation practices and the literary market, questioning the role of translators not purely as a “bridge” between cultures, but as active participants in reproducing/resisting dominant cultural and political narratives.  She enjoys being surrounded by the community of women she has found in Sheffield.  The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk  This track is IRONY BY KETSA This series is funded by Arts Council England

  3. Oct 9

    Running Away with Cheer Cheng - Episode 086

    Hello You! Welcome back to the Earth Sea Love Podcast.  We had a little break there as we had technical difficulties. Nah! I was on retreat communing with nature and needed a rest.  We brought you some powerful stuff in our last three episode of the new series called Practicing Creative Fugitivity which are conversations in response to the book Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu. These conversations are part of a project called Practicing Creative Fugitivity which has been funded by Arts Council Funding. So we return with our next episode in the series with Cheer. Lijiaozi Cheng. Dr. Cheer Cheng is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work has moved across media, literature, sociology, health and technology. It was really good to get to know Cheer deeper through this conversation.  In this episode we talk about: * Being part of community * Being fugitive * Chinese heritage  * Running away alone and together * Black Feminism * Home towns and nostalgia * Homeplace for black and brown women * Getting out into nature for healing * Studying for a PhD and burn out * Having the headspace to write * Academic dreams * Being ‘othered’ * Playing the accepted roles to settle into society * Childhood and trying to fit in * Being ungendered * Chinese work culture of 996 * Fugitivity is a journey, a process, an attitude Bio: Cheer Cheng is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work has moved across media, literature, sociology, health and technology. She is still trying to figure out what exactly she is doing. She has researched suboptimal health - the uncertain space between health and illness, media campaigns targeting ethnic minoritised communities around vaccination and participation in medical research, cultural inclusion within a university, and technologies in everyday life with dementia. A thread running through much of this work is an interest in how different forms of knowledge and lived experience encounter one another, within health and care but also in everyday life. For now, she is still floating between these things, exploring her academic identity and her identity more generally. She currently works at Queen Mary University of London on public involvement and engagement, health data and research governance within Parkinson’s research. Alongside this work, Cheer collaborates with artists and technologists on creative projects exploring AI, memory and human–technology relations. Her recent collaborations include interactive AI artworks and generative film, bringing sociological questions into conversation with new media and speculative creative practices. She is also slightly troubled by - and perhaps slightly guilty about - her own engagement with AI. Much of what draws her attention sits somewhere in between: categories that don’t quite hold, forms of knowledge that don’t easily fit together, and relationships between human and non- human worlds. She is interested in what becomes possible when we stay with these uncertain spaces rather than trying too quickly to resolve them. Among all this indecisiveness, she loves cats. That might be the most stable part of her identity.     The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk  This track is Never Heard BY KETSA This series is funded by Arts Council England

  4. Sep 4

    The Re-Education of Beverley Thomas* - Episode 085

    Hello and welcome back to The Earth Sea Love Podcast. Thank you for being here for our next episode in our new series, Practicing Creative Fugitivity. I’m your host Dr. Sheree Mack and I had the great pleasure of talking with Beverley Thomas in this episode. *The Re-Education of Beverley Thomas, is the title taken in part from Beverley’s PhD from Sheffield University. A creative PhD around Black Expresssion, in this conversation, we talk about: * Professor Jason Arday and the public lynching * Rage, fear and intimidation * Being in support of Arday in private and public * Referring to the other podcasts in this series, episode 083 with Pauline Mayers and episode 084 with Rite Gayle  * Not accepting the term non-human other * We are both human and divine * White Feminism ‘v’ Black Feminism * ‘Ungendered’ not recognised as female/ woman *Fugitive Feminism in community  * Understanding ‘fugitivity' * Experiencing every day racism  * Divesting from society and refusal of the social positions assigned to us * Childhood and education, denying our intelligence * Claude AI and his understanding of 'decentring the human' * The characteristics of white supremacy culture * The Re-Education of Beverley Thomas, the creative PhD experience * Being less stressed and more creative * Beverley’s takeaways from the book Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu; 1. “For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson - that we were never meant to survive. Not  as human beings … And that visibility [as Black women]  which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength … We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired." Audre Lorde, qtd. in Emejulu, p.79 2. 'The Dream Keeper' (1932) - Langston Hughes     Bring me all of you dreams,      You dreamers,     Bring me all of your     Heart melodies     That I may wrap them     In a blue cloud-cloth     Away from the too-rough fingers     Of the world.  Langston Hughes, qtd. in Emejulu, p. 85 3. “that we are each other's      harvest:      we are each other’s       business:      we are each other's      magnitude and bond." Gwendolyn Brooks, qtd, in Emejulu, p. 87   Bio: Beverley (Bev) Thomas is a writer who completed her creative writing doctorate in the School of English at the University of Sheffield and is currently awaiting the outcome of her examination. Her research explores identity — particularly Black British, Caribbean, and African diasporic identity — through the prism of trauma, double consciousness, homosexuality, family secrets, slavery, the supernatural, the mystical, and Afrofuturism. She has been published in several magazines, including Bad Form and Dream Catcher. Her poetry was exhibited in the 'Being Human' national festival in November 2021 (His House to Our Home, a 3D virtual exhibition). She has guest lectured on Octavia Butler, spoken to an international audience for the Daring to Dare developmental programme, appeared on Ella Mesma's podcast Power Up (2022), and was a speaker at the University of Sheffield English Colloquium 2022. She is now turning her attention to script writing, building on the storytelling grounded in her doctoral research. - His House to Our Home (3D virtual exhibition)   The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk  This track is SOUL CHOIR BY KETSA This series is funded by Arts Council England

  5. Aug 27

    Community, collaborations and care with Dr. Rita Gayle - Episode 084

    Welcome back to the Earth Sea Love Podcast, with me your host Dr Sheree Mack. In this episode, the second in the Practicing Creative Fugitivity series, sponsored with funding from Arts Council England, I’m talking with Dr. Rita Gayle, a cultural geographer whose research practice works at the intersection of race, gender, class and the city with a focus on Black cultural production in Britain during the 21st century.  In this episode we talk about: *The Practicing Creative Fugitivity project * Growing up as a child in Sheffield and feeling safe * Giving space to dreaming and the imagination * What is fugitivity? * The interventions in 2018 at ICA the foundations of Fugitive Feminism  * Black women coming together to experiment with ideas and joy * Creating community in an anti-black, anti-community, anti-care society * The passing of Professional Jason Arday * The percentage of Black Professors in comparison to the percentage of undergraduates * The academy as a bad corporation  * Being a Black scholar in the British academy is dangerous * Transformation from inside and outside the academy * Supplementary school systems *Uses of the collaborations * Our zinester sanctuary, other ways of knowing *Being intentional with Black Feminist thought and practice * Nathan Cofnas as a fraud and a real m**********r! *Whiteness and humanity - human and non-human other * What would do you want to be in as it is a choice? * Remember that Professor Jason Arday is human, and humans are flawed * Decentring the human * Ambivalence in the UK and USA contexts * The liminality of life   Bio: Dr Rita Gayle is a cultural geographer whose research practice works at the intersection of race, gender, class and the city with a focus on Black cultural production in Britain during the 21st century. Dr Gayle’s PhD thesis was concerned with the emergence of the Millennial Generation of Black women in Britain who had formed creative collectives between 2013-2020. Most recently, Rita was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow for the Conjunctures NOW strand of the Stuart Hall Archive at the University of Birmingham. She is a co-presenter of The New Nationwide Project Podcast on Substack. Prior to working in higher education Rita had worked in many industries, most extensively in Media. Rita is on X @rita_gayle, Instagram @ritagayle2000 and substack @thenewnationwideproject.      The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk  This track is SUM OF THE ALL BY KETSA This series is funded by Arts Council England

  6. Aug 20

    Homeplace with Pauline Mayers - Episode 083

    Welcome to the first conversation* in the new series, Practicing Creative Fugitivity, funded by Arts Council England. It is with immense joy that I share this conversation I had, your host Dr.Sheree Mack, with the amazing Pauline Mayers. As mentioned before, Pauline was on the podcast in July 25 with episode 081,  Ruptures, healing and reclamation with Pauline Mayers, the final episode of last season. And now she’s back. Pauline is part of the SistaCircle who are reading Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu, and we base our conversation around this text and so much more.   In this episode we are talking about: * . What brought Pauline to the Practicing Creative Fugitivity project? * Our experiences of coming together with black and brown women to study and heal * Racial capitalism and the system * The Unearthing(s)  exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery by Hannah Catherine Jones  * Homeplace - rest, reset, regroup, regenerate, remember * Sci-Fi and Storm, and stereotypes surrounding black women * Being in the academy and not, other knowledges   * Professor Jason Arday and the racial smear campaign * Black women and humanity and non-human other * Whiteness, white supremacy culture and race * History, slavery and exploitation * The beginning of scientific racism * Fugitivity and refusal * Fugitivity in the every day And so much more ...   Get comfortable and settle in to listen with your ears and hearts. This is an intimate, honest, unapologetically black conversation, which is a testament to our wholeness, our aliveness for each other.    Bio:  Pauline Mayers is a multi-disciplinary theatre maker, movement director and performer based in the North of England. She began her career as a Rambert-trained dancer appearing on stage, film and television. Her repertory dance company experience includes Janet Smith and Dancers, Diversions Dance, The Ensemble Group and Phoenix Dance Theatre. She also served as interim artistic director for Teeside Dance Initiative before transitioning to theatre in 2010. Since then Pauline has developed a diverse background as a director, writer, movement director, performer and facilitator. She has collaborated with theatre and live art companies across the UK. Her most recent movement direction and performance work includes collaborations with Selina Thompson LTD’s Twine(2024), live performance artist Paula Varjack’s Nine Sixteenths (2024) – which went on to have a 2026 national UK tour – and Improbable Theatre on An Improbable Musical (2022) and Improbaband: Day = Night (2024). In 2017 she was Associate Director on the Leeds Playhouse’s Queen of Chapeltown,working alongside director Amy Leach. In her own work Pauline explores themes of identity, participation, intimacy and care. Her critically acclaimed solo show What If I Told You, written and performed by Pauline, premiered at Leeds Playhouse in 2016 and toured across the UK the following year. Presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, it was shortlisted for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. Returning for a sold-out four-night run at Leeds Playhouse in 2018, it also featured in the inaugural programme at Brixton House, London in 2022. Lyn Gardner of The Guardian described her work as “shaking up traditional theatre and power structures to put the audience in the picture”. Pauline is also a published contributor to the anthology, Weighted Words(Peepal Tree Press 2021) edited by Jacob Ross, and is an Open Space facilitator with Improbable Theatre.  Now in a new season of her life and creativity Pauline continues to write, and enjoys walking, photography and visual journaling.     *Trigger warning: may contain swearing. No ‘may', it most definitely does.    The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk  This track is Follow My Soul This series is funded by Arts Council England

  7. Aug 19

    Soundbite for the next episode - A little taster with Pauline Mayers

    We don’t usually do this.  We usually just dive into the next episode. But this next episode, the first one in the series called Practicing Creative Fugitivity is a scorcher.  The first episode in the series is with Pauline Mayers and you will hear a bit from her in this soundbite. The conversation* we had definitely gives ‘f**k you’ vibes. It amazing. And I can’t wait to share it with you. Pauline was our guest for episode 081,  Ruptures, healing and reclamation with Pauline Mayers, the final episode of last season. And now she’s back. The full episode of this conversation is out Friday 21st August. Make sure you set a reminder as you don’t want to miss this brilliant, honest, intimate, wide ranging conversation taking inspiration from our reading of Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu and then taking flight.  I’m so proud of it. For now, here’s a little taster, enjoy :)   *Trigger warning: may contain swearing. No ‘may', it most definitely does.    The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk  This track is Follow My Soul This series is funded by Arts Council England

  8. Aug 18

    Introducing the new series - Practicing Creative Fugitivity (ep.082)

    Hello and welcome back to the Earth Sea Love Podcast. We are greatly excited to be sharing our new series of conversations with you. We are also deeply saddened and enraged about the recent lynching of Professor Jason Arday. In this introduction, with me your host Dr. Sheree Mack recorded before Jason’s passing, I talk about the racial smear campaign of the last month or so. I have subsequently gone back in and added a word or two before this episode in honour of Jason.  Below I will include the links I mentioned to positive, good media that champions Professor Jason Arday. In short, he never should have been unalived. They hounded him to death. And he coudn’t take any more. How much can one person take? This introduction is a solo episode where I talk about the Practicing Creative Fugitivity project which is Arts Council England funded. This project involves forming a study circle around the reading Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu. The conversations that follow within this series is me talking with members of the SistaCircle around their understandings and takeaways from reading in community this book. How can we move from the theory into practicing fugitivity in our every day. I thought it only fitting to start this series with my own understanding of fugitivity and how I’ve been practicing it within my life. I hope to return with another solo episode at the end of the series to reflect of how I’ve moved my understandings and practices on in response to these conversations and the practicing creative fugitivity as a whole . We share these amazing conversations as a means of telling our own stories. As a means of witnessing our wholeness, fullness and aliveness for ourselves. As it has become mighty clear and evident,  white supremacy culture, a by-product of racial capitalism is alive and well, working just as it was constructed to work; whiteness = humanness. Anything/ anyone else is exploited, extracted and disposed of. Fugitivity is about refusal. Refusing the anti-black narrative, refusing to be defined, controlled and used and abused by the system. We chose to run, flee, take flight towards freedom. And in the midst of flight we linger to live and love, experience joy and grief, pain and pleasure on our own terms. Welcome back to the Earth Sea Love Podcast. Thank you for your ears and hearts. Enjoy this series.   Links: 1. A replay of the vigil that was held for Prof. Arday at Trafalgar Square on 17th August 2026 https://www.youtube.com/live/lPHGREJFG40?si=Tvziri5N-GJDPmie 2. Two episodes from Kehinde Andrew’s podcast, Make it Plain where he talks about Professor Jason Arday https://youtu.be/f0Led8VMAm8?si=uFjEqf6wtT17QRO0 https://youtu.be/uPmtCS3MPT0?si=cuJWdYetaCcpbgr6 ( at the end of this episode there is the inclusion of a lecture Professor Arday gave last year) 3. Elliott Connie relating to Jason Arday’s situation through mental health https://youtu.be/_n2wE3w3Q40?si=AQJ8xVPbGXzc4_pl 4. Daniella Maison writing in The Independent before and after Jason’s passing https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cambridge-plagiarism-jason-arday-black-academic-b3025197.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jason-arday-hounding-death-cambridge-professor-academic-b3033787.html 5. Owen Jones talking to Kehinde Andrews about the lynching of Professor Jason Arday https://youtu.be/dv8MXCHcBVU?si=WSG7FBwsbUepr7js 6. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza writing about the murder of Jason Arday https://paulddf.substack.com/p/who-killed-jason-arday?r=1qc34b&triedRedirect=true 7. LBC episode where people who knew Professor Arday call in to share how he touched their lives. Right near the end there’s a caller called Dean from Newcastle who shares a speech he prepared about being validated by Professor Jason Arday ( from 51 minutes in they start talking about Jason Arday).  https://youtu.be/0AQZOyOrQpk?si=WRs1E583yNpuya_T 8. The Go Fund Me Campaign set up for Jason’s family  https://www.gofundme.com/f/in-memory-of-dr-jason-atta-kwei-arday 9. The Good Law Project call for a public enquiry into the media https://goodlawproject.org/warnings-about-jason-ardays-mental-health-were-ignored-by-the-press/ 10. Jason Arday was a talented football. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jason-arday-cambridge-university-tributes-37555625 11. A community grief circle has been scheduled by Black Psychology Team for Black and Global Majority communities to come together to grieve for the evening of Thursday 27 August. Sign up here - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bp-community-grief-circle-tickets-1998360526128?aff=oddtdtcreator  12. Let’s and on a good note . Everything Good about Jason Arday, created by his students. Everything Good About Jason Arday:’https://leilacancode.github.io/everythinggood-about-jasonarday/ The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk  This track is MOLE SOUL BY KETSA This series is funded by Arts Council England     * In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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About

The Earth Sea Love Podcast is a podcast for and about women, feminine and non-binary people who are Black, Indigenous or a Person of Colour and their relationship with nature hosted by Sheree Mack. The Earth Sea Love Podcast is committed to exploring the experiences of women of colour with Mother Nature. We want to provide spaces where the hidden voices in the environmental/ conservation conversations can explore their relationship with the natural world.Inspired by time spent outdoors, we amplify the voices of women, feminine and non-binary people who are Black, Indigenous or a Person of Colour; our stories, conversations, interviews, photography, writing and artwork.We’ll be exploring our legacies, histories and memories which have had an influence and effect upon how we perceive ourselves within the natural world and environmental/ climate justice movements.

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