The Rooftop Garden team made a big splash at this year’s World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela. The five-day event was a chance to bring the ideas shaping our rooftop gardens to a new audience, and talk to people all around the world doing urban agriculture.
Photos: by Mark McGuire(See all our WSF workshop pics here)
The largest of our workshops was titled, “Social ecologist perspectives on urban agriculture" which was facilitated by Rotem Ayalon and Alex Hill. We were so excited to spend three hours discussing and sharing with over 100 of our fellow urban gardeners coming from Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, the EU and Canada.
The event began with an brief description of the Social Ecologist perspective, followed by an introduction to our project in Montreal. Most of the participants were familiar with Social Ecology, and when we opened the floor, one person said that he thought it, “brought together a respect and love for our brothers and sisters, as well as for the ecological systems that support all life.�?
From there we broke into smaller groups to discuss and debate what lay behind our motivation to garden in cities all around the world. Together we asked: What are the values or ideals driving our urban gardens? What made you first get involved in gardening? And why do you take time out of your hectic city-life to do it?
Finally, the groups each made a creative expression of one value that they felt supports urban agriculture and how growing food in a city can empower people. Each group did this in a different way. For example, one group wrote a story about how a garden changed someone’s life; one group drew a tree to demonstrate the different reasons people from around the world participate in urban agriculture; and another group wrote a skit using acting, singing and props that they created to tell a story about the transformation of an empty lot and of local street children by a group of gardeners.
The World Social Forum is an opportunity for information exchange between people from many countries, creating a space for active participatory democracy. At the end of the workshop, a number of the participants said that it was among the most refreshing and engaging events they had been to in the forum. In the words of Rosa from Columbia, “You let us speak our experience, and now we see the values we share.�?
The Rooftop Garden project was also featured in a workshop entitled, "Your Movement Starts as a Story," and Alex Hill presented rooftop gardening as part of a panel organised in partnership between Alternatives, Terazul Brasil, and the Brasilian Ministry of the Environment.
Top of page Submitted by alexjhill on Tue, 07/02/2006 - 4:36pm.