Garden of Resilience
24 May - October 2026
Organized by KWAG Curatorial + Public Programs Departments
Located in the Sculpture Garden, KWAG’s Garden of Resilience is designed to empower local residents by providing individual beds for growing organic produce, flowers and herbs.
As a model, it is a decolonial gesture that inverts capitalist expectations of land value and outdated conceptions of aesthetic value and landscaping. As a gallery, the garden will be regularly programmed, activated and cared for, just like our internal gallery spaces. KWAG seeks to learn from the garden and understand how we can best position ourselves to care for our immediate neighbors and local ecologies.
This hybrid platform explores the model of the community garden as a space of radical sustainability and mutual aid on a community level. In a place where 10% of our neighbor’s face food insecurity on an annual basis, the Garden of Resilience will be a refuge of direct action, grounding the possibilities of small-scale, urban food production and community strength through intergenerational exchange and learning.
Gardeners-in-Residence
garden visits
sophia bartholomew and Shalaka Jadhav
As KWAG’s 2026 Gardeners-in-Residence, sophia bartholomew and Shalaka Jadhav take inspiration from sophia’s grandmother’s community’s practice of eating and socializing in the garden, showing off and sharing in its spoils, and Shalaka's memories of their grandfather pointing out how the garden changed season over season when they visited their hometown in India. Titled garden visits, their residency project reclaims the garden as space for knowledge exchange and social connection, and reasserts the central importance of community relationships and relationship-building when addressing issues of ecological sustainability and food security.
Throughout the summer, sophia and Shalaka will host regular gatherings at their garden plot outside the gallery. In exchange, they are asking community members to invite them into their gardens for a visit. Through this series of reciprocal garden visits, the artists will produce a series of film photographs and compile gardening tips, tricks, and stories into a zine.
The residency will culminate in a shared meal, artist talk, and zine launch in October.
Related Programs
Film Screening: Agatha’s Almanac
Saturday, 26 September, 7:00 p.m | Free
Doors: 6:30 p.m., with discussion following
Outdoor screening of Agatha’s Almanac (2025) followed by a community discussion, co-presented by LWIFF (Laurier Wellbeing in Film Forum), a film series expanding the definitions of wellbeing. Agatha’s Almanac is a portrait of the filmmaker’s aunt, Agatha Bock, a 90-year-old woman who lives a fiercely independent life revolving around her passion for gardening. Running time: 87 minutes.
Film Screening: Wild Relatives
Thursday, 8 October, 7:00 p.m. | Free
Doors: 6:30 p.m. with discussion following
Outdoor screening followed by a discussion of the film with green colonialism scholar Ghada Sasa, co-presented by Deeply Rooted. A film by artist Jumana Manna, examining tensions between state and individual, industrial and organic approaches to seed saving, climate change, and biodiversity. Running time: 64 minutes.
Seating will be provided for the outdoor screenings. You are welcome to bring your own picnic blanket. We remind attendees to dress accordingly for the cooler fall temperatures.
Closing Celebrations + Publication Launch
Thursday, 22 October, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. | Free
End-of-season harvest party, publication launch, and community celebration. Over the summer, sophia bartholomew and Shalaka Jadhav hosted gatherings at their garden plot, and visited community members in their gardens. Through this series of reciprocal visits, they have produced a publication that compiles the gardening tips, tricks, stories, and photographs gathered in people’s gardens.
About the artists
Descended from Norwegian immigrants on Treaty 3 territory in rural Northwestern Ontario, sophia bartholomew is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, installation, photography, video, and collaborative work with other artists. Their lived experience of fragility and permeability has had a profound impact on their work, which uses a rural material poetics to explore interconnection and impermanence. sophia received their BFA from UBC and their MFA from the University of Guelph, and they have presented their work across Canada and abroad.
Trained as an urban planner, Shalaka Jadhav practices as an independent curator and writer, exploring spatial positionality, grief geographies, and public memory. They have contributed to climate resilience projects nationally and internationally, and worked in audio journalism, planning departments, and on rooftop gardens and farms. They edit and produce The Walldog, a critical arts writing & research platform with a focus on the Waterloo-Wellington corridor, and always scheme to order dessert.
sophia + Shalaka met in 2023 at a residency co-facilitated by Crystal Mowry and Maggie Groat. Grounded in slow, curiosity-driven, collaborative learning, this residency shaped the approach they carry into their practice and conversations, as they engage with questions of survival and sustainability in the face of intersecting, accelerating global crises.
Headshot of sophia bartholomew + Shalaka Jadhav, September 6, 2025. Photo by Danan Lake.
Get Involved: Apply for a plot
KWAG has plots available for individuals or groups to apply for. Below, you'll find expectations and program goals—please read these before applying for a plot. Access to the plots begins on the Spring Launch weekend on Sunday, 24 May. Throughout the summer, artist-run workshops and seasonal community gatherings will deepen the garden’s mission of transforming underused land into a thriving, sustainable space for community members. As the season closes, the fall clean-up offers a final moment of collective care to reflect on the program’s goals.
Program Goals
• Growing: Workshops, ecological learning, and hands-on gardening skills
• Creating: Gardener-in-Residence program and creative community events
• Eating: Shared harvests, food donations, and seasonal celebrations
Participation Details
• $20 annual membership fee
• April–November (main programming May–October)
• Limited plots
• Dawn to dusk access
Gardener Responsibilities
• Plant and maintain plots (by 15 June)
• Keep the space tidy and manage waste
• Arrange care if away
• Contribute to shared upkeep
Guidelines & Responsibilities
• Grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers only
• Organic practices only (no chemicals)
• Respect boundaries and others
• No smoking, loud music, or unattended pets
Contact Us
Images: Feature and header, Garden of Resilience, 2025. Photo by KWAG.
Feature and Gallery photos courtesy of Angus Turney, Phi Doan.
Programming imagery:
Still from Agatha's Almanac (2025), film by Agatha Bock. Courtesy of LWIFF.
Still from Wild Relatives (2018), film by Jumana Manna. Courtesy of Deeply Rooted.
Photo for Closing Celebrations + Publication Launch by sophia bartholomew.
The Garden of Resilience is sponsored by Enbridge.
Garden events connected to KWAG's 70th anniversary are supported by Stantec and the City of Kitchener.
