Hi everyone,
What a pleasure to be part of this group! I’m still having trouble accessing the posted article from Cultural Geographies, but hopefully I’ll figure out a way to read it this week. I’ll also try to find some interesting material to post that we can all discuss.
Wishing you well – Cathy
We hope you all had a chance to read participants’ statements on the blog (see directions below) to get a sense of the breadth of experience this group brings to the seminar.
To continue the dialogue and preparation we are posting a reading (yes, only one reading for now!) by Julie Guthman that addresses the intersection of food systems, education and engagement (“Bringing good food to others: Investigating the subjects of alternative food practice.” Cultural Geographies 2008 15: 431). We would also like each of the participants to submit one or two sources (could be essays, films, etc. ) that similarly address the crossover between these three, and provide some commentary on what you submit via the blog. If you are unable to attach the source, please provide appropriate references so that anyone interested could take a look at them before we meet.
With this bibliography and your blog posts as our background, we hope to begin online our conversation on how to build successful models for combining education and food system work in a community engaged model. Please feel free to make new posts and/or comment on anything posted on the blog. We hope to build a good start to our conversation online, so when we first meet in Minneapolis, we’ll already hit the road running.
We’d like to welcome you to the Sustaining Sustenance blog, developed in preparation for our seminar together in Minneapolis at the 2011 Imagining America conference.
As we mentioned earlier in our email via Matt, we have setup the blog to enable all the participants to read the submissions of each other, and ultimately to host a conversation regarding some of the key questions that appear in your submissions in advance of the conference.
All of the participants’ submissions, as well as our original call for submissions, appear in the right-hand sidebar. You can read and comment on any of these as you wish. This main page will host the main threaded conversation. In order to make a post to the blog (which we hope that all of you will do!), you will need to login with the credentials sent to you via email.
We will be making a follow-up post shortly with additional details and provocations for the conference, but feel free to engage in the blog with new topic posts or comments on other posts at any time!
We look forward to the discussion.
Brian, Kathleen, and Matt
catherine, 
valentine, and 
Brian are discussing.
Brian 10:42 am on September 2, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Cathy,
I have updated the posted file. The earlier one appears to have been corrupted, but this one should work.
Brian
valentine 5:39 pm on September 16, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Re: the article (which has now been emailed around a couple of times for those who haven’t been able to download it) It’s a good piece, which I’ve been enjoying teaching for the last few years. I look forward to hearing how this plays out for you all — I’m definitely finding part of the challenge of food system work to be getting a few different groups to stay in conversation, and they all make thematic appearances here: the food security/food access/social justice-interested people (especially those working on race and equity issues), the people interested in creating better market conditions for alternative food producers, and the people who are running the existing food system (and who may or may not have stakes in maintaining or changing features of it).
catherine 7:15 pm on September 16, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I agree, it is a great piece. I love how her students were able to witness the challenges impacting the success of the evaluated programs and had opportunities to break through the limits of their own biases.