DAZE AGHAJI

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REGENERATIVE CITIES

Words - Emily Vernall Photos - Zoe Salt

It's 2042. A hazy summer evening and London is bustling with life. The last of the evening's light is setting behind the highrise buildings that dot the skyline. You can hear grime music playing in the distance, the sound of the tube whizzing past, people laughing and friends dancing nearby. 

A few fleeting golden rays filter through the trees at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve. You are sitting on the grass beneath the trees, listening to the hum of insects and the song of a goldfinch. It's the end of a slow evening of tending to the phytology medicinal garden, a space providing free food and medicine for local and surrounding communities. These communal, wild spaces are common-place across London now, bringing together educators, families, environmentalists and artists to share stories and tend to the urban havens of the busy city. Communities are no longer simply striving to be sustainable, they are regenerative. 

20 years ago London was a very different place…a hive of activity, yes, but people’s lives were isolated and disconnected. A thousand strangers shared a tube line, but few exchanged a word. The metropolis was fast paced, driven by the tick of the clock. Now, the jarring division between nature and man has begun to close. The wilderness has slowly creeped back into the cityscape, bringing a softness and warmth to the concrete jungle.

Healing the divide was not about throwing away everything we once had and starting anew.  It has been about keeping the good things and making them better. It has been about learning from the past and learning from nature. It has been about unifying the environmental and social complexities of the urban landscape with possibilities anew. 

In this space, communities are more than sustainable, they are regenerative.

Meet Daze. A London-based Climate Justice Activist, Creative Director and Artist in Residence. Or, as she prefers to call herself, a  ‘Woodland Faerie Forest Nymph’. At just twenty-two years old, she has already made her mark on the world, and is shaping it for the better. 

Daze stumbled upon the climate movement quite by chance. When she was only nineteen, a friend took her to attend her first Extinction Rebellion (XR) meeting. Something about it felt right. Only five days later, Daze was working for the campaign full-time. Soon she co-founded Extinction Rebellion Youth, motivated by the need to create a dedicated space that harnessed the power and agency of young people. 

“I fell in love with the movement, with the way it opens up space for conversation, for love, for care. This was deeply radical for me, it was the first time I felt a sense of home outside of my own family,” Daze said.

The idea of regenerative cultures has deeply informed Daze’s work. Regenerative Culture seeks to reweave humanity into the wider ecosystem by taking self-responsibility for ourselves, each other, and our wider communities. Daze internalized this worldview in simple moments – dancing in the streets of Marble arch, and making food collectively with activists like her. These acts of rebellion - at once so ordinary yet so radical - taught her what life could be like if we hold hope front and center. 

From here her work, and leadership for young people, has gone from strength to strength. She became the youngest candidate to stand in a European Parliamentary election and ran under the banner of a Climate and Ecological Emergency Independent to bring awareness to the need for political will in addressing the climate crisis. She works to recover democracy from the bottom to top with a focus on truth-telling and brazen action. ‘I was a young, black woman who just cared enough to say - enough is enough.’ 
Now she combines her love for art and storytelling with her work climate action and social justice. Daze is currently a Creative Director at Earthrise Studio, an agency dedicated to communicating the climate crisis as well as an Artist in Residence at Phytology, the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve. Through her activism, Daze has found her voice and reclaimed her agency with care and softness. She hopes to now uplift other young people to do the same all around the world.

How to participate: 

Learn more on how you can help by following these links: 

If you want to get involved with the work Daze does, follow her on her socials to be part of her community: @Dazeaghaji on instagram and twitter. 

To read stories of hope and of new possibility, follow @Earthrise Studios on Instagram for climate storytelling.

For UK based climate action join Extinction Rebellion.

For Londoners looking for a place to reconnect with nature in the big city check out Phytology Bethnal Green Nature Reserve.

For young people who want to challenge and change their own communities, look into funding from the Blagrave Trust.