Dock Member Series: Heart Seeds Creative

Heart Seeds Creative became a member of the Dock community in the fall of 2020. They specialize in herbal remedies, screen-printed textiles and DIY workshops with a passion to inspire lifelong curiosity, discovery, and growth with land-based education, medicine, and art.

We connected with founder, Chantal Solomon, to learn about what has changed for her and Heart Seeds Creative over the last year and what she is looking forward to most in 2021.

1. How long have you been a Dock member? What attracted you to theDock?
Four months. I was attracted to the specific focus of the fields of work and values members share, to have a positive impact on the community.

2. Introduce your organization in a few sentences – what do you do, what’s your purpose?
We help empower diverse individuals to cultivate healthy lifestyle choices through Community Herbalism, Art making & our nature-inspired product line. We offer self-care products & host workshops to introduce people of all ages to various mediums of creativity and wellness. Our goal is to help foster stronger communities by providing individuals with inspiration towards harm reduction in their own lives and families.

3. What is your favourite part about working for your organization?
My favourite part of this work is seeing people excited about the positive results they experienced from the implementation of a new skill they learned with us or received from a product.

4. How has Covid impacted your organization? Any surprising challenges and wins along the way?
2020 was our first year of operation in Victoria after a year long transition from living & running the business in the Comox Valley. The trickiest part was connecting with the local community and the challenge of running in hands on learning opportunities. Our workshops are based in community building through getting our hands dirty. Anyone can look up a video of how to make things days. We hold workshops as a means of getting people offline and out into the community.

As surprising outcome is that we began to develop a global audience while focusing more time to online offerings. It's pretty fun to someone from India show up at a workshop!

5. How did you adapt this past year?
We started offering more educational content online. We started a Facebook called "DIY Herbal Creatives" to encourage community around making things. This led to starting online drop-in co-working hours called "Make & Talks". Where I hold space four hours a week for people to learn about a project I'm working on or ask questions about things they are making.

6. What is your team most excited for in 2021?
We received finding from Storyhive by Telus to produce a new podcast called Resilient Creatives. Which will interview artists & makers about the trails & triumphs of pursuing their creative practice while facing adversity. We will launch in September.

Want to learn more about Heart Seeds Creative?
Check out their website or follow them on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest.

Interested in becoming a Dock member?
Learn more about our membership options!