THE CHALLENGE
Urban community gardening is getting more and more interest but gardeners face multiple and multifaced challenges to start and maintain a successful garden. We wanted to understand why and what would need to change by comparing case-studies from all around the world with initiatives we visited in London.
THE SOLUTION
The aim of the project has been building a framework to help align food growing with city-wide priorities, bridging top-down /strategic decision-making with bottom-up growing initiatives, to systematically increasing urban food production using a transferable, scalable, and replicable framework/ model.
N.B. Currently under final development.
N.B. Currently under final development.
DETAILS
Project partner: Arup and Incredible Edible Lambeth
When: 2022 - ongoing
Team: LOT partnered with IEL as a team of 4.
Main tasks: design research, interviews, data analysis, project managament, report building, workshop design and facilitation.
Notes: This project is funded by Arup's CSR fund.
Context
GLOCALISM APPLIED TO COMMUNITY GARDENS
Methods:
- case studies review
- current knowledge analysis and comparison amongst project partners
Since their shared interest in community gardens, Arup, Incredible Edible Lambeth (IEL) and LOT (Astha Johry and myself) decided to collaborate on a piece of research aimed at fostering more community gardens worldwide. The partnership leverages on: Arup's urban design professionals and worldwide network, IEL's presence in London and their hands-on experience and LOT's approach to solution-driven social research.
The project partners had already the amount of knowledge already acquired throughout experience and previous projects since the kick-off of the project. For this reason, the first exercise was ordering this knowledge along a "community garden journey" that starts by "Bringing people together" and obtaining land rights and terminates with "Coordinating use of the land".
Initially, LOT coordinated the construction of this journey and validated it via early-on workshops.
After having brought everyone on the same page, LOT facilitated the population of the map with details per each step by all partners (each partner has one post-it colour). Those details have been then clustered in themes (pink post-its).
This exercise was fundamental to share knowledge amongst project partners but also to inform the design of the following research activities: Arup has performed a case studies analysis from cities where they have offices whilst LOT and IEL collaborated on field visits. These activities were meant to validate/disprove the knowledge written down on the map (below) and to acquire new details.
An exctract of the Mural board we used for the "current knowledge analysis and comparison" exercise.
Research
CHALLENGE AND NEED INVESTIGATION
Methods:
- Garden visits
- Onsite interviews
- Onsite workshop
- Role playing
- Expert interviews
LOT and IEL visited 10 community gardens that were different in size and location (North, Center and South of Lambeth Council). After interviewing gardeners during their activities, Naomi and I asked everyone to stay with us for a 45-minute workshop: a few workshop boards were prepared and selected according to the ones that felt most relevant for each garden.
The themes that we wanted to explore were: Roles and responsibilities, Diversity, Land usage, Decision-making processes, Type of volunteers, Harvest sharing, Communication, Governance, and Land rights acquisition.
To strengthen the study even more, the team interviewed experts from activist groups, and national associations (Social Farms and Gardens). Interviews were held with Council officers in order to explore their point of view too.
Map representing the gardens we visited in Lambeth and beyond.
Naomi holding the workshop at Railside community garden.
Entrance of Bandstand Beds community garden.
Bringing it all together
RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR CHANGE
FOR CHANGE
Methods:
- Data merging and analysis
- Recommendations report building
After finishing the research phase, the team went back to analise what was found and added to the validated insights the new information collected in this round of structured research.
This was all clustered and a report containing the challenges, opportunities and recommendations per each step of the "Community garden journey" was put together and provided to Arup.
This was all clustered and a report containing the challenges, opportunities and recommendations per each step of the "Community garden journey" was put together and provided to Arup.
The graphic reppresentation of our stakeholder layering.
The data found from the case studies analysis has been cross referenced by Arup with the report IEL and LOT provided them with. The whole team created a framework with 3 Themes with 3 Subthemes each, and multiple Suggested actions.
These suggested actions were deducted from all the gardens visited or analysed via the worldwide case studies and are meant to make a garden "successful".
The basic construction of the "Pathways to Community Gardening" framework. DETAILED VERSION TO BE RELEASED
Validation workshop
"DID WE GET THIS RIGHT?"
Methods:
- Workshop design and facilitation
- Project management
But what does "successful" even mean for a community garden?
To make sure the output of the collaboration would be considered helpful by community leaders (the main users for the side LOT and IEL covered), the team decided to hold a validation workshop with leaders from the gardens that LOT and IEL visited in the first round of research.
To make sure the output of the collaboration would be considered helpful by community leaders (the main users for the side LOT and IEL covered), the team decided to hold a validation workshop with leaders from the gardens that LOT and IEL visited in the first round of research.
We held brainwriting sessions to expand on what "success" could mean for gardeners (this was to avoid that our definition of success would overtake theirs).
Furthermore, to make the framework reletable by community leaders, we crafted one story per each macro-step of the journey and a series of situations regarding each story were created. The objective was asking gardeners what actions they would have taken in each of those.
Furthermore, to make the framework reletable by community leaders, we crafted one story per each macro-step of the journey and a series of situations regarding each story were created. The objective was asking gardeners what actions they would have taken in each of those.
Astha, Signe and I were responsible for facilitating one station where one story was meant to be analysed: 3 groups of 3/4 people were going in rounds to each station to provide the requested input.
IEL and LOT prepared a report about the validation workshop and provided it to Arup.
After reviewing the result, Arup is currently iterating the framework and preparing for its release!
Stay tuned to know when it is going to be available!
After reviewing the result, Arup is currently iterating the framework and preparing for its release!
Stay tuned to know when it is going to be available!
