To celebrate our Autumn Winter 2024 collection, Patterns & Pathways, we have partnered with Japanese footwear brand Flower Mountain. With rich colours, environmentally conscious materials and high quality craftsmanship, each pair is inspired by the outdoor world and made with the aim of bringing people closer to nature.
For the collaboration, wildlife presenter, activist and co-founder of birding group Flock Together, Nadeem Perera, takes us on a journey through Bristol’s green spaces. The path he maps allows him to identify birds, explore the landscape and find inspiration for helping his community connect with the outdoors and the creative industries.
Now a wildlife presenter, activist and co-founder of Flock Together – a birdwatching collective for people of colour – he explains how a chance encounter with a green woodpecker changed the course of his life.
“I was sat there on this park bench, while everyone was at school, completely enamoured with this woodpecker. I had to run home to grab my camera. It got me in that moment, and the green woodpecker became a kestrel, became a long-tailed tit, became so many other birds.”
Nadeem grew up in east London feeling abandoned by an education system that didn’t make space for him. Out in nature, he was free to be completely himself, no matter how he was doing or what he was dealing with at home. “Being born on a council estate, a half Black, half Asian boy from a single-parent family, meant there were so many more problems for me to solve than just school,” he says of his teenage years.
That ability to be present and reflective outdoors became invaluable to him, and the young explorer started to take longer trips, heading out across the capital in search of new experiences. “I looked on the map and saw a massive plot of green on the other side of London,” says Nadeem. “It was a two-hour journey from where I lived, but I thought, you know what, let me just get there and expand my horizons, expand my thinking, expose myself to new people, new sights…”
The patch on the map was Richmond Park and it became a pivotal part of his journey. It’s where he took his first pair of binoculars and where he became a true birder, learning about, naming and recording the wildlife he was seeing. At that time, it was a hobby, and Nadeem was also working as a youth football coach, a role he continues today. But eight years on, a chance online encounter with fellow birder Ollie Olanipekun saw the pair create Flock Together – a space where people of colour could enjoy bird watching as a group.
“The first flyer went out in June 2020 and we had about 15 people on the walk. Fast-forward four years and we’re now pulling in numbers of 300 plus, regularly.” Sure, people love birds, says Nadeem, but Flock Together offers more than a chance to learn about the flight pattern of a starling – “it is about community and networking and creativity and coming together,” he says. The instant success of the collective saw both founders find opportunities on TV, an experience that had a big impact on Nadeem, who saw a chance to forge the career path he had always wanted.
“This is how ignorant I was to the game – I called up the cameraman who had been working with me on The One Show, and I was like, ‘Bro, how can I do what you do?’ He said, ‘The first thing you’ve got to do is move to Bristol, because that’s where all the natural history TV is made.’” Nadeem left London for Bristol in 2022, taking tenacity, determination and a helpful amount of naivety with him as he knocked on the doors of various production companies until one gave him a chance, hiring him as a researcher on a National Geographic series.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to spend time in a lot of offices of major production companies and it became immediately obvious to me that there was nobody from my community, nobody that even looked like me, represented in these spaces. These companies have given us brilliant natural history TV and we’re lucky for that, but the time is right for a little bit of disruption.”
Nadeem has taken his learnings, insight and connections from the creative industries and from Flock Together to “open the door for the next generation of explorers” by launching Hero Hyena, an online platform and printed magazine bridging the divide between contemporary culture and the natural world, supporting the creativity of new voices, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds. “The traditional way has a lot of value, but it needs that fresh injection of creativity and energy,” says Nadeem. “And that usually comes from the street, you know? We need to let people from backgrounds like mine into the decision-making spaces, into the creative process.”
It’s fair to say Nadeem’s path has been one he couldn’t have foreseen when he was sitting on that park bench as a teen. “My whole journey has been one of exploration,” he agrees. “And there’s a beautiful thing about exploring: you don’t have to be an expert. You’re not supposed to know anything about this new place. Because exploring new environments create new behaviours, new thoughts, new actions, new words, and I think that’s massively conducive to growing as a person.”
Nadeem wears the Alfie Garment Dyed Herringbone Jacket, Theo Cotton Stripe Short Sleeve Tee, Alfie Garment Dyed Herringbone Trousers and Flower Mountain Yamano Kaiso Panelled Trainers.
The Yamano Kaiso Panelled Trainers are comfortable panelled trainers from Japanese label Flower Mountain composed of algae, recycled nylon, raw plant materials and recycled plastic bottles. All four colourways are exclusive to TOAST and designed in collaboration with Flower Mountain inspired by our seasonal concept and colour palette.
Words by Zena Alkayat.
Photography by Marco Kesseler.
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