Everyday Growing and Digging Cultures

Cultural Values of Digging (AHRC funded, PI: Farida

Vis)

Co-investigators: Peter Jackson, Andrew Miles and Erinma

Ochu Researcher: Penny Rivlin

W: culturalvaluesofdigging.wordpress.com | T:

#culturalvalue

Everyday Growing Cultures (EPSRC funded, PI:

Farida Vis)

Co-investigators: Peter Jackson, Andrew Miles and Erinma

Ochu Researchers: Ian Humphrey, Yana Manyukhina

Project partners: Caroline Ward (BBC), Steven Flower

(ODM), Ric Roberts (Swirrl), Kirstin Glendinning (Kindling

Trust), Danny Antrobus (Grow Sheffield)

W: everydaygrowingcultures.org | T: #growingcultures

MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bournemouth, 9th January 2014

Mapping as a tool for growing communities

Ian Humphrey, Peter Jackson and Farida VisEveryday Growing Cultures (Cultures and Communities Network +, EPSRC)

MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bournemouth, 9th January 2014

Cartography as a contested tradition• Mapping has a long and contested history,

rooted in the politics of Empire and military conquest (JB Harley, maps as ideology, serving specific interests while claiming to be neutral/objective)

• Can mapping be appropriated for more progressive ends? (local community food projects, promoting access to fresh affordable fruit and veg, social justice, public health, environmental sustainability).

Everyday Growing Cultures• Recent project in EPSRC’s Cultures and

Communities Network + programme

• Worked with two local food groups, both involved in mapping projects

• Kindling Trust, Manchester: ‘working towards a just and ecologically sustainable society’

• Grow Sheffield: ‘celebrates, inspires and raises awareness of the benefits of growing, harvesting and sharing food across our communities and city’

• Open Data Manchester & Open Data Sheffield

Kindling Trust

Grow Sheffield

Case studies

Kindling Trust (Feeding Manchester)During May we partnered up with Open Data Manchester and Everyday Growing Cultures to carry out a pilot mapping project in Old Trafford. The aim of the project was to produce a website with a toolkit to guide communities throughout the country to carry out their own mapping initiative with a goal of identifying unused plots of land for growing food…

We specifically wanted to: develop a map we could integrate with our existing Feeding Manchester website; enable people to identify potential growing spaces; connect people interested in doing something on one or more sites; and more broadly try and change the way we think and talk about the unused spaces around us, particularly around council-owned land (Kindling Trust website).

Walking and mapping• On two walking events, the group found 5.2

acres of potential growing land which Kindling Trust members estimated could produce around 40,000 kg of fruit and vegetables, with a market value of around £200k

• Uploaded data to Crowdmap as a basis for discussion with the local authority over land ownership and access to sites; and a means of coalescing community.

Potential growing sites identified in Old Trafford

Grow SheffieldIt was useful to go to Manchester but mapping every bit of available space was not what we really wanted to do [in Sheffield]. We wanted to look at some spaces and think about how it could be turned over to community use... and work out what to do next with the information…

What was unexpected [was that we] noticed cherry trees and social infrastructure - housing, schools ... and that has moved my thinking on in terms of what does it take to make a successful growing space. Part of that is having the social as well as the physical infrastructure for growing (Danny Antrobus, Grow Sheffield blog).

Route of walk inPitsmoor, Sheffield

For Grow Sheffield, we are starting to think about how mapping could be used to help people to find growing spaces, food projects and wild food in their neighbourhoods, as well as helping connect people who are interested in organic food growing.

So we used our guided group walk around Pitsmoor to stimulate our discussion about all the ingredients and steps required for communities to establish local food growing, and to get us thinking about the role mapping could play in Grow Sheffield’s projects and wider work.

Walking and mapping

Mapping as a social practice

• Mapping used for different purposes by each group

• In both cases, mapping helped raise their profile and make their presence more visible to their Local Authorities and other potential funding sources

• Maps help legitimise community organizations, bring evidence together in a powerful visual form, demonstrate unmet demand and help coordinate community resources to a common end

• Different kinds of maps: digital/interactive vs. large-scale physical map.

Mapping, talking, cooking, eating…• Mapping as part of broader set of social practices:

walking and talking, cooking and sharing food (‘growing community’)

• I think it was interesting not just focusing on the data ... we had nice food, we got out into the local neighbourhood and took photos and then we came together and discussed them – it was a nice activity that we did – it just so happened that we made data as well (Steven Flower, Open Data Manchester, interviewed by Erinma Ochu, Everyday Growing Cultures).

Cultural appropriation?

• Coalition government recognised the potential role of community gardening as means of producing more resilient communities in current economic recession

• The Big Dig initiative (Social Action Fund) provided training and advice to 8,000 community food volunteers across the UK, focusing on people from deprived areas to create vibrant community food gardens which, officials claimed, would reduce anti-social behaviour, provide fresh, healthy food and put pride into communities (www.bigdig.org.uk/)

Conclusions• Like mapping, digging is a powerful metaphor that

can be mobilised for a variety of purposes (cf. C17th Diggers movement or the wartime Dig for Victory campaign)

• Exploring these ideas in new project on The Cultural Values of Digging (AHRC)

• Our collaboration with Grow Sheffield and The Kindling Trust has reinforced our belief in the power of maps and mapping, especially when combined with other ways of engaging communities through walking, talking and eating together

• Like all cultural forms, the power of maps can be appropriated for a variety of political ends.

Acknowledgements and links

• Everyday Growing Cultures was funded by the EPSRC (Cultures and Communities Network +): http://everydaygrowingcultures.org/

• The Cultural Values of Digging is funded by the AHRC (Cultural Value programme):http://culturalvaluesofdigging.wordpress.com/

Yana Manyukhina, Erinma Ochu, Caroline

Ward and Farida Vis

MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bournemouth, 9th January 2014

Everyday Growing Futures film

• Purpose

Methodological value:

• Presenting new ways of creating and sharing knowledge

• Research engagement and impact - reaching wider audiences

• Deepen understanding and inspire reflection

Outcomes of the film

Intended effects

• Share knowledge and experience

• Inspire new possibilities

• Create the feeling of hope

Achieved impact

• Citizen-led greening actions in Trafford

• Growing interest in the film and the issues it raises

Cultural Values of Digging

Farida Vis, Peter Jackson, Andrew Miles,

Erinma Ochu, Penny Rivlin

MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bournemouth, 9th January 2014

Activities around digging again very popular

Everybody wants an allotment, grow their own

Cultural Values of Digging

The project examines different forms of digging by studying

their perceived cultural value through five distinct aspects:

• Digging as ‘nation-building’

• Digging as ‘lifestyle choice’

• Digging for ‘heritage’

• Digging to enable ‘community building’

• Digging as ‘gift’

We focus on two different social scales: looking both at

individual and community groups, and by examining the

mainstream media and recent relevant policy initiatives.

Our research questions

1. What are the different cultural values associated with digging and how are they articulated through the five identified thematic strands as well as the different social scales and institutional levels?

2. How are different historical reference points used to articulate and explain these values?

3. How is digging linked to ideas of citizenship and relevant to what it means to be British today?

4. What are the different imagined futures and societal trajectories associated with these values?

Three historical motives and movements

“England is not a free people, till the poor that have noland, have a free allowance to dig and labour the commons..”Gerrard Winstanley, 1649

Recent context

• In 2011 the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) threatened to scrap the Allotment Act (1908), it was saved by a strong public response. Press coverage: Is this the end of ‘The Good Life?’

• Renewed cultural and political currency, entwined with notions of locally oriented consumerism, sustainability, grassroots community action against austerity

• Physical acts of digging as embodiment of community

• Rediscovery of C17 The Diggers and Gerrard Winstanley

• Policy initiatives: Giving White Paper (2011) – digging as ‘gift’: ‘better connected communities’ ‘rebuilding trust’

• Big Dig set up: ‘broaden culture of giving’, ‘giving as social norm’, inspiring ‘next generation of givers’

1. UK print media representations, 2000 - 2012

• Case study operates at an institutional level, focuses on different values of digging presented in UK national press. Search terms: ‘allotment’ and ‘grow your own’

• Focuses on main newspaper coverage, excluding magazines and supplements. Interested in studying the ‘newsworthiness’ of digging and its media framing.

2001 – 2010: 427 stories (allotment)2001 – 2010: 341 stories (GYO)

Increased popularity of allotments Rent increasesWaiting listsSolutions for growing demand for allotmentsEconomic benefits (saving money, making money from your produce)Celebrities growing their own

2. The Winstanley Festival

Yes, that’s me…

The festival stresses ‘a re-born sense of community spirit amongst ordinary people everywhere’

5 in-depth interviews

3. Recreating a wartime garden

• Inspired by the work of C.H. Middleton (1945), the pioneer of the 1940s Dig for Victory campaign, this case study examines how one family is using Middleton’s writing to recreate a 1943 wartime garden. Interview

4. The Big Dig

• Institutional level, examines the ‘Big Dig’ project, which seeks to attract people from derived areas who typically don’t volunteer. Focus on local people to create: ‘vibrant community food gardens, which can reduce anti-social behaviour, provide fresh, healthy food and put pride into communities’. 4 in-depth interviews

End of project event

8th of March in Manchester (Friends Meeting House)

If you’d like to join us, please get in touch:

f.vis@sheffield.ac.uk | @flygirltwo