In 2023 and 2024, the Getty-funded Growing Networks project, organised by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, brought together curators from art galleries, museums and natural history collections in the UK and Europe. Through a series of well-received workshops held in Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and Paris, the initiative began to build interdisciplinary connections between apparently disparate institutions that hold botanical art collections. The workshop also raised a number of questions, including a fundamental one around the definition of botanical art and around the colonial origins of many of the collections.
The Plants on Paper project was inspired by the Growing Networks conversations and was hosted by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, in recognition of the important contribution and potential role that the RBGE has to play in informing contemporary debate and research on decolonisation, and revised approaches to engagement with natural history collections. Supported by the Getty Foundation Paper Project, Plants on Paper drew on our art collections to develop much needed knowledge exchange workshops in Edinburgh, bringing together curators and artists from specific originating diaspora communities.

The website, and the articles written by participants on the Plants on Paper project, follow on from research carried out as part of this project. My contribution is this article, Activating the Archive.

Available in both print and digital formats.

• https://plantsonpaper.org/