Wilding is the inaugural issue of soil songs, a new digital publication by Earthly Futures Studio exploring ecological futures through art, design, research, and storytelling.

Conceived as both a journal and a gathering space, Soil Songs seeks to connect artists, researchers, writers, activists, and communities through accessible forms of publishing that bridge environmental knowledge and cultural practice. The publication emerges from a recognition that many of the most urgent environmental conversations are often confined within scientific, technical, or policy frameworks, while the social, emotional, and imaginative dimensions of ecological change remain underrepresented. The debut issue, Wilding, responds to the theme of environmental protection by asking how we might move beyond preservation as a purely managerial endeavour and instead understand protection as the cultivation of conditions in which life can flourish. Through this lens, wilding becomes both an ecological and cultural practice: one grounded in reciprocity, experimentation, collective care, adaptation, and more-than-human forms of coexistence.

At its core, the issue asks: What does it mean to be wild in an urban world?

Where does wildness persist, emerge, or take root within the spaces we inhabit? How might we create conditions for biodiversity, belonging, resilience, and ecological imagination to flourish within contemporary cities and communities? Rather than focusing solely on conservation, Wilding foregrounds stories of adaptation, stewardship, repair, and unexpected forms of flourishing that challenge conventional boundaries between nature and culture, human and non-human, city and wilderness.

About Soil Song’s approach

The issue will bring together five to six contributors from across art, design, environmental research, activism, community practice, and Indigenous knowledge systems.The editorial process will combine invited commissions with an open call for participation.

Content may include:
Essays and Experimental writing
Interviews, Profile, Case Study and Conversations
Recipes and memoir
Sound-based and multimedia contributions
Field notes and observational writing
Experimental and speculative forms of storytelling (video work, photography, artistic interventions)

This approach reflects Earthly Futures Studio’s commitment to distributed cultural production and creating opportunities for both established and emerging voices. While invited contributors will help shape the intellectual and creative framework of the issue, the open call will ensure space for unexpected perspectives and local forms of knowledge that are often overlooked within mainstream environmental discourse. The inaugural issue serves as the foundation for a longer-term publishing platform that aims to support sustainable, equitable, and collaborative cultural production.

About the design collective