The Unifying Language of Food that is Inspiring a Global Movement
How we can eat our landscapes?
What should a community do with its unused land? Plant food, of course. With energy and humor, Pam Warhurst tells at the TEDSalon the inspiring story of how she and a growing team of volunteers came together to turn plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens, and to change the narrative of food in their community.
In her talk, Pam explains: “We tried to answer this simple question: Can you find a unifying language that cuts across age and income and culture that will help people themselves find a new way of living, see spaces around them differently, think about the resources they use differently, interact differently? Can we find that language? And then, can we replicate those actions? And the answer would appear to be yes, and the language would appear to be food.
None of this is rocket science. It certainly is not clever, and it’s not original. But it is joined up, and it is inclusive. This is not a movement for those people that are going to sort themselves out anyway. This is a movement for everyone. – We have a motto: If you eat, you’re in.“
“We are responding creatively at last to what Rio demanded of us,” Pam continues,” and there’s lots more you could do:
- One, please stop putting prickly plants around public buildings. It’s a waste of space.
- Secondly, please create — please, please create edible landscapes so that our children start to walk past their food day in, day out, on our high streets, in our parks, wherever that might be.
- Inspire local planners to put the food sites at the heart of the town and the city plan, not relegate them to the edges of the settlements that nobody can see.
- Encourage all our schools to take this seriously. This isn’t a second class exercise. If we want to inspire the farmers of tomorrow, then please let us say to every school, create a sense of purpose around the importance to the environment, local food and soils. Put that at the heart of your school culture, and you will create a different generation.”
“There are so many things you can do, but ultimately this is about something really simple. Through an organic process, through an increasing recognition of the power of small actions, we are starting, at last, to believe in ourselves again, and to believe in our capacity, each and every one of us, to build a different and a kinder future, and in my book, that’s incredible.”
See the original story at Ted: https://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes/