Ashley Brailsford and her son at Brooklyn Heights Community Garden
On a warm Wednesday afternoon, sunshine peeks through the clouds over the Brooklyn Heights Community Garden while a cluster of parents and kids gathers to learn about animals. Representatives from the Nashville Zoo lead the discussion — they even brought some live critters with them, including a millipede and a Madagascar hissing cockroach. At the end of the event, organizer Ashley Brailsford asks participants what brings them joy.
Brailsford is the founder of Unearthing Joy, an organization dedicated to inclusive, multicultural, nature-based education that centers the contributions of Indigenous people and people of color.
Brailsford started the organization after she was, as she puts it, “liberated” from her previous job at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her son was 5 years old at the time, and when schools shut down, the two spent a lot of time together outside. Brailsford noticed how thoughtfully her son engaged with nature and wanted to enroll him in a local environmentally oriented program. She encountered a problem during her search.
“The ones I was seeing were really white, they weren’t diverse,” says Brailsford. “So I said, ‘Well, I want us, and I want him, to see himself in these spaces. I guess I’m gonna do this little program maybe once a week, and I’ll invite some other families I know who may be interested.’”
Brailsford took participants to a poultry farm, where they learned about chicken breeds and how civil rights icon John Lewis would preach to chickens when growing up on his parents’ farm. Parents wanted to know when the next event would be. Seeing a demand, Brailsford combined her professional background in early childhood education and her love for the outdoors to create Unearthing Joy. While her local programming engages a diverse community of youth and adults, Brailsford also trains organizations and community leaders on incorporating culturally inclusive practices into their own nature-based programs.
When the Scene asks about Brailsford’s biggest influences, she points out that many well-known historical figures had deep connections with nature. Harriet Tubman, for example, was an herbalist. “George Washington Carver — all we heard about was him and his peanut,” says Brailsford. “[But] this man was a master at composting, a master at regenerating soil. … He was a master at ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ — all those concepts.” Brailsford also mentions contemporary peers like Leah Penniman, author of Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land. These leaders demonstrate the oftentimes overlooked intersectionality of environment, history, civil rights and community.
“Some people will say, ‘Well, how do we get more Black and brown people in nature?’” says Brailsford, “It’s not that we don’t enjoy it. There’s been strategies, historically, that have very, very much, intentionally, caused a disconnection over time. And made outdoor spaces unsafe. I mean, we’re still experiencing trauma and policing that happens outside usually. And so there’s just been so much, historically, that has created a disconnection, which creates a barrier to re-engaging communities back into nature.”
Brailsford is working to rebuild those connections by facilitating them herself, and she’s also equipping other organizations to do so. That means expanding the definition of “being outside.” For some, it means digging in the sand or engaging with animals. For others, it might mean simply sitting outside to chat, or making art outside.
“Often we hear ‘nature,’ we [think we] got to go for a hike, we got to go for a kayak experience, we got to go somewhere far to enjoy it,” she says. “But I always say, ‘Well, what’s here?’ We can hear birds here. We can grow stuff right here, right? So it’s not that organizations have to recruit Black and brown folks to come to their space, but how do we engage folks in the spaces they’re already in with what’s there as well? So I think the barriers exist on both sides, mindset-wise, about how we get to engage folks. ”
Brailsford also has some tips for those seeking to make outdoor spaces more inclusive.
“What already exists in folks’ neighborhoods and how can you uplift that?” she asks. “You don’t have to go create a new initiative. Who’s already doing the work? It may be on a smaller scale, and you may have to really look for it, because it’s not always that they’re an official nonprofit. But there is somebody in every community doing something that is supporting nature and the environment, or trying to engage kids in different ways.”
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