In April, Maddy (co-lead of UAC) was asked by Mary Stevens at Friends of the Earth experiments programme, to bring together evidence and reflect on the question of ‘How to map neglected spaces for community=led growing’.
This will help to inform FoE’s Postcode Gardener project – which is developing a self-sustaining model for community-led cultivation and management of local plots of land; moving towards what we might call an agroecological commons – or cooperation to grow healthy food for each other!
Read the blog here: https://experiments.friendsoftheearth.uk/blog/how-map-neglected-spaces-community-led-growing where you will find links to Maddy’s research and accompanying report.
This was a 5-day piece of research to bring together the explorations and projects of the mappers group that Maddy convenes with Janie Bickersteth (Incredible Edible Lambeth / Good Food Oxford), to highlight exemplar maps elsewhere in the world, and to consider all this from a growers point of view, not a mappers, to understand the kind of mapping a grower would be happy engaging with and feel enabled by.
Over the last 18 months Maddy has been convening, with Janie Bickersteth of Good Food Oxford and Incredible Edible Lambeth, a UK-wide community of mappers interested in visualising spaces for food growing as a way of unlocking access to land – one of the great barriers to a resilient and accessible food system.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the mappers community of practice, come along to our next Policy Influencers Network Group (PING) on Right to Grow and tools for shared care of public land for food growing.
OR check out our mapping page here.
OR contact Janie on foodlandmappers@gmail.com