As the freeze-thaw cycle begins to loosen winter’s grip, we find ourselves navigating a season of shifting ground as melting ice can reveal toxicity, erosion, and uncertainty, yet it also opens channels for renewal, movement, and new ecological imagination. This moment invites us to consider how Antidotes to Toxicity might emerge not only as remedies but as creative practices that help communities adapt, collaborate, and reshape futures together.

In this newsletter (and on the EDC platform), you'll find new opportunities to engage that spirit: collaborative river-futures workshops from Jones Falls 2076 exploring the imagined future of the Jones Falls in Baltimore, a plant-based Weedy Watercolor Workshop with herbal artist Ellie Irons, and our new Project Awards Competition supporting the collaborative work of EDC members. Together, these initiatives invite us to move with the thaw, imagining healthier waterways, creative antidotes, and more connected ecological futures.

The EDC is launching a pilot cycle of $2,000 Project Awards aligned with our 2025–26 annual theme, Antidotes to Toxicity. Three awards will support collaborative, interdisciplinary projects that explore ecological design responses to toxicity—social, environmental, material, or otherwise.

Projects may take many forms, from artistic or expressive work to events, media, or physical interventions. If you have an idea that could benefit from modest funding, community feedback, and connection with fellow EDC members, we invite you to participate!

The process begins with sharing your project idea on the EDC community forum, where proposals are shaped through dialogue and collective learning before final submission.

Learn more about the theme, eligibility, and how to get involved on the EDC platform.

Join the EDC in welcoming artist Ellie Irons on Thursday, March 12th (6-8 pm) at Blue Light Junction for Feral Hues: A Weedy Watercolor Workshop.

In this hands-on workshop, participants will create and paint with watercolors derived from regionally-sourced wild and weedy plants while exploring natural cultural stories from the Hudson/Mahichannituck River to Baltimore.

Ready to dream?

River Reimagining Workshop: 

Imagining alternative futures for the Jones Falls River

The Jones Falls River has been partially hidden below I-83 for over 50 years, overlooked and mistreated. How might we radically reimagine our river as the center of a reconnected and ecologically vibrant Baltimore?

Join one of our first two River Reimagining Workshops to think beyond the status quo and share your creative, dream-like, radical, unexpected visions for the future of the Jones Falls.

Find new ways to connect through events and opportunities on the EDC platform:

• Call for Art: The Crow's Nest is seeking proposals for a new exhibit, SOLARPUNK, which invites artists to share their visions for a more harmonious and just world, due March 3rd
• Call for Poetry: Flooded Pine Press seeks poetry for an upcoming collection - Apothecary for the Future, due March 31st
• Join EDC curator, artist, plant medicine educator, and clinical herbalist Alyssa Dennis for Herbal Compass CSA: Navigating Healing Throughout the Calendar Wheel, meeting one Saturday per month from March – October. 
• Planetary Political Ecologies: 2026 Wageningen Political Ecology Spring school, 13-17 April 2026
• Call for High School Artists: The Crow's Nest is also seeking youth artists to be a art of their exhibit "Claiming the Future", due April 3rd 
• Syntropy / Entropy: Experience a land-based inquiry exploring possibilities for making, creating, and relating otherwise through an innovative residency, based in mutual care and stewardship, at a farm in the Sierra Nevada, Spain. April, 2026

**Important Note About the EDC App**

Our team is working on a new EDC app to capture new features and improvements to our site. In the meantime, the old app has been disabled. If you are having trouble accessing our site, please delete the app and use your web browser instead. Thanks for your patience!