For most country kids, being outside in nature is part of everyday life – on the bike ride from village to village, the forest strip, in its green normality, passes them by virtually unnoticed. If you grow up in a big city or have decided to make the urban area your adopted home, the whole thing looks different. If the man-made parks aren’t enough to find rest, planning a trip to the city’s surroundings is the order of the day. But not only the planning can be a challenge. To open access to this cosmos, some exclusionary barriers must be made conscious and overcome in the first place.
This experience has also been made by Tsellot Melesse, Berlin-born film and casting director, host and presenter. “As a city kid, I used to be super anti-outdoors. Hiking, that’s something only white Germans did with their family. It was kind of uncool, you didn’t want to belong to this realm,” she says before adding, “In retrospect though, I wonder if that rejection didn’t come because it was a world that wasn’t open to me, that seemed incredibly far away – and that I always perceived as an indication of wealth.”
It was only through her then-boyfriend that she encountered that world in her late teenage years. Their first vacation together was a hiking trip, with hitchhiking and hostel stays, during which she realised not only how much she loved hiking but also that excursions into nature don’t always have to come at a high cost. Still, a sour taste lingered. “What I do with Black Canary today has grown out of the frustration that far too often it takes a white cis man to provide access to this world. I share that experience with many other Black FLINTA*.”
In April 2022, Tsellot turned that frustration into action and founded the outdoors club Black Canary aimed specifically at Black FLINTA* – (acronym for female, lesbian, inter, non-binary, trans, and agender people) – joining a movement seen in many places that aims to diversify outdoor activities and strengthen a sense of community. For Tsellot, it was quickly clear why she wanted to address this group: on the one hand, she says, she was missing a Black circle in her life and on the other, she had no desire to create yet another place for endo cis men to flourish. She wanted to guarantee that the dynamic would not change and that there would be a relaxed sense of comfort with the knowledge that only FLINTA* would be present at the outings and activities.
And one further need was elementary; that of creating a safer space, a space for recovery: “It is said that Black FLINTA* are the backbone of society. But where do we regenerate, find energy again, if we must carry everything all the time, if we must be responsible for everything? To find strengthening, we need a space focused on us.” Since the club’s inception, Tsellot has organised regular meetings for the group: sometimes they go to the bouldering hall, learn how to throw axes, travel to the Baltic Sea, rent canoes or hike through the Berlin countryside. “In nature, we no longer wear our everyday clothes, we don’t ask what we do for a living or who got their hair grabbed. We don’t want to emphasise our suffering but are simply human in those moments. We share joy, create an empowering feeling without having to explicitly express it,” says the 26-year-old.
The fact that Tsellot takes other people out into nature is a fairly recent development. She usually spends her me-time here. Diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and depression, which she also talks about openly on her Instagram channel, time in nature has become an essential part of her life in recent years. Here she can put her problems in perspective, realise that the world keeps turning, the earth, the trees keep existing, even if her personal struggles seem huge, they suddenly seem smaller compared to the size of her surroundings. “I think that’s why I like being in nature the most because it decelerates me, it grounds me completely. In nature, I am just a little spark,” she explains. Although she enjoys hiking less-traveled routes or camping alone in remote locations, she would never go completely off the beaten path: “At the end of the day, I am a Black woman so a certain amount of risk always resonates.”
Although she wouldn’t want to miss this time with herself, the community aspect is an ever-present factor that shows up in her work, in her voluntary projects, in the food business Nourame that she runs with her parents, in all of her creating and thinking – a habitus she has grown up with since early childhood. After her parents moved from Ethiopia to Germany, they started an Ethiopian church in Berlin with other people, creating a community of nearly 150 people who support each other, come what may. “That’s what I understand community to be, it was kind of put in my cradle and now I’m carrying it forward,” Tsellot says. Her parents and community modelled for her what it means to truly be there for each other, to have the door open for guests, even when financial resources weren’t always rosy.
But it’s precisely this mindset that she also applies to Black Canary, for which she bears almost all the costs privately: “I’m not rich, but what’s left of my money I like to put into it because it goes to my people. As long as I have it, I don’t mind. In our society, in our generation, the community idea is not really present and is sometimes thrown around randomly by brands. But I know how much it can give you, especially if you’re part of a minority.” Strengthening cohesion in a sustainable way to drive change that can spread from the micro to the macro level is an approach she hopes to take further in the future.
Tsellot has been a formative part of the creative scene since she was 14, has worked in editorial teams and radio, made films – including one about marathon runner Melat Kejeta – made a name for herself as a casting director, and recently started anchoring and reporting. She has traveled extensively around the world through her jobs and nature get-aways. However, her base, her focus point from which she drives long-term change, remains Berlin. “I believe in the power of local cohesion. At the neighbourhood level, we can move a lot, also in terms of sustainability – everybody looks at themselves first and then do what they can around them. Small town thinking in a big city,” Tsellot says and adds, “My utopia is that we work with the resources that surround us – from homegrown vegetables to our clothes – and learn to create something new.”
While growing her own vegetables still hovers in the distance, at least in her personal field of activity, she has already realised her utopia in the context of clothing. Second-hand clothing has been her way to go since childhood and today she additionally borrows pieces from the platform pool. When she buys new clothes, it’s from sustainable brands or young designers who upcycle – or she takes action herself. “For me, a lot of things arise from a lack, from a need. Be it Black Canary or when I don’t know where to get a top. I just do it myself.”