Tree Time explores how human relationships with trees help us connect with the epic timescales of environmental life and crisis.

In conversation with Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck, Tree Time hears from people living and working in Thamesmead on walks to visit their favourite trees. In conversations reflecting upon their relationship the natural environment, they talk about human interactions with time – such as capitalist time and political timescales – as well as the economics of trees, the effects of the environment on people’s mental health, and much more.

Hosted by Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck (The Alternative School of Economics), with guests Aruhan Galieva, a British-Kazakh actor, comedian, and activist, Ian Holt, Estate Manager of Lesnes Abbey Woods, Debo Adegoke, an Nigerian-born artist living in Thamesmead, and Camilla Allen, a landscape architect and environmental historian who shares ideas from her book The Politics of Street Trees, during a public walk around Thamesmead.  Thanks also to Noah, Eva, and Stephen who contributed to the discussion during the public walk.


The Broadcast will be aired on rtm.fm on the following dates & times

1st March @ 5pm / 2nd March @ 12pm/ 4th March @ 5pm /5th March @ 7pm / 6th March @ 2pm/ 7th March @ 6pm / 8th March @ 12pm / 9th March @ 2pm



Tree Time is a TACO! commissioned artist research project by the Alternative School of Economics. It looks at the specific relationship trees have with expansive notions of time as a useful tool for thinking about and re-understanding human relationships with the natural environment, ecological complexity, and imagining the future.
The Alternative School of Economics is a collaboration between artists Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck, formed in 2012. They make art that questions economic doctrine and knowledge hierarchies. Working and collaborating with communities, and using feminist and alternative economics and pedagogies as forms of resistance, they explore global political issues in relation to the complexity of lived experience. They produce film, graphics, photography, texts and clothing, as forms of activation, dissemination and reflection, shared to publics in art and non-art contexts. Recent projects include A Lexicon of Debt with At the Library, Bootle, and What did you do.. a poster commission for Bookworks, London, in support of Medical Aid for Palestinians.


Debo Adegoke is a design artist. He designs and makes sculpture using found objects as his starting point. He is guided by the materials to realise form and function. He lives and works in Thamesmead. 

Camilla Allen is a landscape architect and historian, and co-editor of The Politics of Street Trees, published by Routledge. Her research is driven by an interest in how the study of trees and tree planting can help uncover and articulate contemporary and historic values and aspirations. Alongside her teaching and research practice, she contributes to local projects in Sheffield where she lives and works, including the Sheffield Wheat Experiment which aims to create a space for a re-imagining of our food system through climate resilience, community, social justice and the health of soil and people.  

Aruhan Galieva is a British-Kazakhstani an award-winning multi-disciplinary actor, writer, producer, musician, and intersectional environmentalist. Her sold out debut comedy hour ‘Eco Maniac’ won the Luke Rollason Memorial Bursary Award and the Watering Seeds Award for Global Majority Activists working on peaceful climate action projects. She is an Ambassador for the Bats Conservation Trust. 

Ian Holt is estate manager at Lesnes Abbey Woods. He has worked in both local government and the voluntary sector and is skilled in nature conservation, sustainable development, environmental issues, biodiversity, green infrastructure, and volunteer management.