GEM (Grown, Edible, Meaningful): Herbal Probes for Community-Driven Environmental Change

The proposal seeks to develop and assess a way to gather accounts from different faith communities about culture, environmental values and food traditions. The tool builds on the concept of cultural probes, which can be used to research people's lifestyle choices and values, and, innovatively, using them as a means to share learning between community members rather than purely feeding back to designer/researchers. The project uses communally grown food as the probe activity through which participants embed, articulate and share cultural values and sustainable life choices, drawing on the success of community growing projects to connect people with each other, with their environment and with issues of sustainable and healthy living.

Participants will be invited through community and faith groups to choose and grow edible plants as 'herbal probes' to inspire discussion about provenance, sharing, sustainability and culture in a group context. Residents in two distinct culturally-diverse urban areas of Leeds will start the growing season by preparing recycled containers at a launch workshop, then planting and nurturing a seed for an edible plant chosen to have symbolic meaning to them. By harvest time, they reunite to share the produce and stories of what the plants represent to them, thereby also giving insight into values and life choices. Excess herbs and vegetables can be swapped. The process will develop aspects of environmentally-friendly living in a way that integrates with ordinary life yet inspires reflection, while eliciting accounts that reveal different attitudes to environmental living across communities, cultures and faiths.

Accounts will be analyzed to inform on two aspects of the project - what are the different traditions with food that relate to how people regard environmental messages? And how does the presence of a herbal probe in the life of a household impact on interest and engagement in environmentally sustainable practices?

Who will benefit from the GEM project and how:-

Local:

People of the two areas of Leeds: Through recycling, and then growing a chosen edible plant, the people of these areas will be able to explore specific environmental and sustainability issues in relation to their own practice and learn more about themselves and each other. Sharing the meaning behind their choice of edible plant, and other related stories, creates a chance to come together across communities in way that puts the focus on a small social activity, seeing community connections established and/or reinforced; .

Seagull Reuse Enterprise: This organization has waste disposal costs associated with disposing of paint containers collected as part of its recycling paint initiative. In the short term, by donating pots to the project to use them as containers for the herbal probes, Seagulls will reduce their costs and in participating, one possible outcome will be longer term solutions; not least, should this project prove successful in encouraging further container growing providing a sustainable long term solution for Seagulls, and/or provide a model for other similar environmental interventions elsewhere in the country.

Engagement between the researchers and the communities will pass on research skills, including means of evidencing the impact of environmental initiatives ; notable here are also the skills of data gathering, recording of visual and oral data, and collating data into a usable resource for many different audiences.

More broadly:

The opportunity given to people to recycle, and grow their own food can have several benefits - it may encourage further recycling and/or reuse of products as well as encouraging creativity, whilst growing edible plants may encourage more home grown food to be produced (such as has been the case in Todmodern - see CfS). We hope it may also provide an accessible means to engage with environmental and sustainability issues, which could potentially contribute to the health and well-being of the communities involved as well as the wider benefit that all sustainable activity must have on national targets.

Grassroots environmental groups: through using or adapting the herbal probe methodology, such groups can make evident the impact of their environmental interventions; they will have access to data concerning people's interest in and understanding of growing edible plants in relation to environmental and sustainability issues. It may also foster thinking about how to engage different (faith) communities and adapt activities and/or approaches so that a wider variety of the people sharing a locale are involved in preserving the environment they share. The resource of images, stories, recipes and growing tips will provide a basis for this type of engagement. Equally, these materials may be of interest to a wide range of community groups; keen to learn about or contribute to understandings of the nation's culture in relation to edible plants or environmental practices.

Faith and interfaith groups: through having access to a community generated resource that links religious doctrine and liturgy about food in general and edible plants in particular, with environmental and sustainability practice, faith groups will be able to consider the impact and significance of food on the environment, and with the prepared materials , could consider implementing similar interventions. Particular care will be taken in preparing material that could be circulating through different faiths and different interpretations of the same faith so that it is culturally relevant or clearly marked as culturally specific.

We will be working closely with interfaith and environmental organisations (eg Concord: http://www.concord-leeds.org.uk/; Leeds Faith Forum: http://leedsfaithsforum.org/ locally and Friends of the Earth) to disseminate results, since they have broad connections as does partner oganisation LLISI.