Eat Here Now

Eat Here Now is an investigation into how we can re-imagine our cities to be near food. In collaboration with landscape architect Leslie Ryan, we curated an art show looking at the entire landscape of North Park, and re-imagining it to be one that was food-focused The streets are wide, the yards are large, and the existing enthusiasm behind urban agriculture is very present in North Park. NewSchool of Architecture and Design students helped us to show this vision, through photoshop renderings that spotlighted everyday, urban neighborhood landscapes into productive foodscapes.

The exhibit included an interactive farm table and a large map of North Park where visitors could pin where they were growing food. Weekly farm and food documentaries and films were shown and we held a panel, on the closing weekend, where three individuals presented their current urban agriculture projects or businesses. Eight years later and this topic has not faded. City policies have been reformed to make it easier to develop community gardens, ordinances have been passed to allow for food gardens and animals like chickens and bees to be raised at home. And now, during a pandemic, people have gravitated to the idea of an urban homestead. Imagine if we developed parks, school landscapes and other civic spaces to grow food. The resilience we could develop, both in boosting our immune systems thorough locally grown food, and also, increasing access to fresh, produce we could truly have communities that are near food.

COLLABORATORS:

Art Produce
Leslie Ryan
NSAD graduate students

ARTICLES & VIDEOS: