Sun, May. 15, 2016 ⁄ 4:30–6:00pm

Food Enough? – Soil Lab

Dirt

Since the beginning of the year a group of 9th Ward neighbors, environmental explorers, and urban farmers have been meeting together with the Twin Cities Agricultural Land Trust at the experimental publication site, Beyond Repair, in the Midtown Global Market. We’ve called our get-togethers Food Enough? We’ve gathered to discuss ideas and possibilities around truly equitable food land use in the Twin Cities and how the meeting of like minded yet disparate skills and knowledge can help put into place a landscape that is more abundant and fruitful than we’ve yet to imagine.

On May 15, at 4:30pm, we invite you to bring a handful of soil to explore, and talk with the conveners of the Soil Lab project and neighbors interested in our relationships with soil. What lives in the soil here? What can we learn from soil about ourselves and our surrounding systems, and therefore what can it teach us about equity and inequity, about our neighborhoods and societies?

We invite you to join us, add your thoughts, and broaden the ideas and experiences within Food Enough? towards future conversations and actions.

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

Sun, Feb. 7, 2016 ⁄ 3:00–4:30pm

Food Enough? / A Continuing Forum on Food, Land, Access, and Possibilities within the 9th Ward and Beyond

Presentation Nº 1: Why Beyond Repair and TCALT: A short talk on land, collaboration, and critical social engagement in the micro.
Question Nº1: What do you think when you think about agriculture in 1850? 1950? 2050?

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Food Enough? A Continuing Forum on Food, Land, Access, and Possibilities within the 9th Ward and Beyond

When considering an urban agricultural future, what does it mean for a neighborhood to have *abundant* or at least *enough* food? How is food-producing land part of a desirable vision for land “development” / land use? And in turn, who benefits most directly from a reconsideration of land-use development?

While South Minneapolis’s 9th Ward contains the highest concentration of urban farms within the entire Twin Cities metro area, it remains, nonetheless, a bit of a barren landscape when it comes to accessibility to fresh fruit and produce. Furthermore, while full of vacant, city owned land, Powderhorn, a 9th Ward neighborhood, is the only area within Minneapolis that is statistically gentrifying.

Within the space between these points folks from Twin Cities Agricultural Land Trust, Beyond Repair, and elsewhere have begun an on-going and exploratory conversation regarding food production, land access, and future visions of the city in relation to agriculture, access, and abundance.

Our group converges through a shared interest in the future and history of urban agriculture, the role of land trusts in establishing more equitable land access, and historical legacies and contemporary examples of community cultivated land (and how we can work toward this in the Twin Cities).

Conversation participants will be able to contribute visually and artistically to this process as the group will co-create printed materials that record major themes to be distributed throughout the 9th Ward and, furthermore, to develop questions for future meetings.

* Relaxed atmosphere!  No bosses, no teachers!  Surrounded by ample beer and food!

** Any conversation concerning land and access within Minnesota, and the country as a whole, needs to be seen through the lens of colonialism and settlement. Inasmuch this series of conversations wants to acknowledge and make clear that it is taking place on Dakota land.

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

What does an abundant neighborhood look like?

What does an abundant neighborhood look like? This is a question that I think about a lot. The 9th Ward is more than a bit of a “food desert ,” especially when it concerns fresh, healthy, and affordable produce.

alexbcs

It’s with this in mind that I’m really excited to have had folks from Twin Cities Agricultural Land Trust down at the shop today. A group of urban farmers, academics, and activists, TCALT advocates for re-zoning strategies that lobby for municipal owned, and / or vacant, land to be made available as land trusts for urban farming.

TCALT will be starting a recurring get-together in association with Beyond Repair. Likely the first gathering will be towards the end of the month.

· Resident Weirdo· ∞