Building a local community to imagine a regenerative food system for Leipzig
How We Eat in Leipzig is an immersive learning experience to engage a local community to imagine an inclusive regenerative food future together. Through nature based learning and eating at the same table over the course of five workshops during one year, the community builds a sense of belonging to Leipzig and to each other through the food they eat, grown in their surrounding environment.
Local
Germany
Leipzig
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As individual(s) in partnership with organisation(s)
First name: Ashley Last name: Scarborough Gender: Female Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: The Garage is a rising creative community studio in the multicultural East of Leipzig. Formerly a Chevrolet garage in the 1920s and scheduled for demolition, the building was saved and renovated into the space it is today. The team at The Garage have built a multi-use space focused on building an intergenerational and multi-cultural community through all creative disciplines and with a desired central theme of breaking bread and sharing food together. The Garage has been received very well and despite its rather young age has a committed audience. It is run by an engaged diverse crew and has seen a range of events and activities, from exhibitions to concerts to drumming, dancing, creative DIY workshops, sauna etc, all of which are based upon the notion of creative experimentation and expression. The Garage is at the core of the How We Eat in Leipzig project, the physical space for coming together to learn, eat and imagine and build a sense of belonging for the local neighbourhood, interested folks and within the socio-cultural landscape of the city. Nationality: United Kingdom Function: Project Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Stralauer Allee 20b Town: Berlin Postal code: 10245 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 160 92634778 E-mail:hello@ashleyscarborough.com Website:https://www.howweeat.earth/
How We Eat in Leipzig is a holistic approach to building a sense of belonging and community through food. We invite local people to learn with each other and engage in a process of building new narratives for a regenerative food system in Leipzig. We do this by facilitating holistic food experiences that guide guests through new ways of regenerative thinking.
There are 3 core aspects:
Holistic Learning: An inclusive pedagogical approach through learning by experiencing, by reflection, by conversation and by imaginative storytelling.
A sense of belonging through food: giving a frame for people to build connections to each other, the surrounding land and food that makes their place unique
Imagination and play: allowing people to explore their collective future creatively through storytelling, including all voices.
We will host 5 full day workshops spread across one year, in-line with seasonal produce, for a community of 15-20 people. Each workshop is based on a regenerative principle: Reciprocity, Working with Potential, Self-Organisation, Place Based and Living Systems.
The workshops start immersed in nature with contributions from local experts, as we believe nature is the best teacher of regeneration. This is followed by a meal that encourages guests to reflect on their learnings together, through a menu with ingredients and activities representing the regenerative principle. The day concludes with a collective imagining of how the learnings could be integrated into a future vision, e.g, how might we imagine a food system based upon reciprocity for the benefit of the whole community and nature? The output of the 5 workshops will be a story developed throughout the year, depicting the 5 aspects of a regenerative local food system for Leipzig, written by all the voices of the local community, including silent voices such as nature. This will be shared on a digital platform and in a physical exhibition at The Garage, to engage a wider audience.
Food Stories
Regeneration
Holistic learning
Community Participation
Imagination
We take a systematic approach to sustainability starting with how people understand the world. We believe empowering people to imagine a new inclusive future with optimism and playfulness is the foundation of systemic change for sustainability. When people have tools to imagine a thriving future for every living being on the planet, new mindsets and behaviours start to adapt and develop towards this new vision.
Typically, sustainable development takes place at a mechanistic, technological level e.g with reducing emissions and forming circular material flows. However, we believe to make truly sustainable and regenerative change in the world, we must challenge the core aspects of how humans operate on the planet, and particularly how we see our relationship with nature.
It is this belief that guides us to design educational experiences aiming to shift peoples perspectives, putting regenerative principles at the centre of the food experiences we will host with the Leipzig community. The food experiences are designed to inspire people to challenge the extractive and mechanistic paradigms of our current systems, to learn from nature through the food we share and to envision a future that enables everything (people, animals, plants, society) to thrive in emergent and evolving ways.
Food is a vital link between ourselves as natural beings and the natural world. Through the How We Eat in Leipzig project we connect everyone to the local environment, through the food on our plate, grown in local soil. To push Wendell Berry’s statement “eating is an agricultural act” further, we believe “eating is an environmental act”. By highlighting this link between food systems and sustainability, the offering allows participants ways to explore the connection to their food and ultimately their local environment. Due to the systemic nature of the initiative, we believe that this is exemplary in the sustainability context.
A series of educational dinner experiences is simple, but that’s its beauty. A shared meal is one of the most connecting and profoundly human experiences. Humans have been doing this for millennia, starting at the campfire. The simple act of eating with one’s neighbour, friends or strangers, ignites a strong human connection. As Micheal Pollan says “eating from the same pot, puts everyone on the same emotional page”.
It is this connection and shared positive emotions that we are fostering within the program. Ashley is an experienced host, creating a welcoming space of trust, openness, empathy and kindness allowing people to feel warmth, and ultimately optimistic about contributing to the community. We believe that to create a sense of belonging, people need to feel that they are shaping something meaningful, that their voice is being heard and their needs met, and they are building strong relationships with fellow people. As well as eating and learning together, the story building aspect of the workshops is vital in forming this sense of belonging, inclusively.
Another important component is the space itself. The event spaces play a special role in the experience, designed to enable people to embody what they learn and experience together. Spatial boundaries consciously and subconsciously influence our emotions, forming the basis to process everything that has been learnt throughout the day. Through aesthetics, considered details (lighting, menu design and food on the plate), all shape the positive feelings experienced by participants. Ashley's design background is essential in creating the space and making the change process a meaningful experience for participants.
The building itself is a protected monument. Sitting beautifully, unused and decaying for years, until the Garage crew decided to declutter it and prepare it for a communal use. It's visible age and patina connects people to another time, a symbol for protecting the old for something new to grow.
We believe that people are the centre of change, and in order to shape inclusive social systems, we need spaces where every voice can be heard with equal volume. Therefore, we are inviting farmers, restaurateurs, ‘consumers’, retailers, chefs, citizens, children, food producers and others into the community to learn together and act as representatives of their perspective. All levels of knowledge and cultural backgrounds are welcome.
At the start of the program, individuals form the community, operating in their own fields, yet when they learn together through immersive experiences, the individuals grow into a whole: a community empowered to shape change for their local place together. In a world where competitiveness and individualism is the norm, it is exemplary to offer a program that gives space for collaborative participatory structures to grow organically as a tool for change.
By committing to the 5 full day workshops, the trust between community members grows as diverse perspectives are understood, encouraging a sense of belonging within the community. The events will be free of charge to allow people to participate without having to be limited financially. This is what the funding will enable us to achieve.
The methodology for the collective imagining of the regenerative principles includes human and non-human voices, acknowledging that nature is a significant voice of our future. By inviting participants to see through the lens of non-human stakeholders, such as rivers, trees, soil microbes, means that the participants can build empathy for the natural world around them. This happens through embodying visualisation techniques. Resulting in a collective narrative of a future that depicts all living beings thriving together, not just the loudest stakeholders.
We also aim to engage the wider Leipzig community in participatory storytelling through a digital platform, please refer to the following question regarding how this works.
We plan to document the story building process of the five workshops in multimedia ways, producing videos, recorded audio and visual depictions of the narratives. For this we will commission local Leipzig filmmakers and artists from the Garage community. We will share this content with a wider audience on a digital platform, inviting citizens to upload their own elements of the future food narrative, broadening the inclusivity of voices and perspectives even more. Alongside the digital platform reached by many, we would like to present these multimedia outputs in an exhibition format within the Garage space, catering for those who prefer to engage in new ideas in an analog way. Here we are particularly interested in catering for children as their playful curiosity for the world is beautifully unique, often challenging the norms of society.
The programme takes an emergent approach, which means as the programme develops, community members will shape their own food experiences, for example, inviting guests to share personal and meaningful dishes, to be incorporated into the menu by chefs for the next meals. The outcome is a collection of food stories shaped in a participatory way by the community, for the community.
As the core community evolves and grows, so does the wider online community on the digital platform, Inviting a space for a variety of people to share their food and nature based stories, to include culturally diverse recipes, regenerative food ideas and shared knowledge of home growing techniques, the platform is an emerging and evolving for community engagement.
The impact of both the offline community and digital community is an organically grown sense of belonging through shaping something positive together. A sense of belonging, learning and sharing food together are all beneficial to mental health and gaining positive emotions.
The design of the initiative has been a transdisciplinary approach, combining a wide range of knowledge, from multiple contributors. The Garage, namely Tom Watson (British), Lydia Glup (German) invited Ashley Scarborough, a Brit living in Berlin to offer the programme for the neighbourhood surrounding the building. Ashley has developed the educational programme with the support of multiple collaborators, most notably Saskia Rysenbry (New Zealand), Jonathan Edelman (American) and Adam Lusby (New Zealand). All contributors offered a diverse range of professional backgrounds that shaped the programme. Additionally, contributions from farmers, some regenerative and small-scale, some more conventional, have supported the building of knowledge around regenerative food that form content in the workshops, as well as chefs. As is indicated with a letter of support, the programme development has been supported by educational expertise from TastEd, validating the experiential learning aspect of the programme. The implementation of the initiative will be a multi-level engagement, inviting a wide variety of stakeholders to join the community, as discussed in other parts of this application. Each workshop will be run by a local expert in a relevant field to represent the principle of the session, exposing participants to wide ranging perspectives. Each meal will involve a different local chef in developing the menu to cater for the evolving regenerative learning throughout the workshops. This also allows participants to be exposed to different cooking techniques, food styles and cuisines, all expanding the knowledge of the community. In order for the ingredients of the meals to stay true to the concept of place-based food, we will purchase produce from local farmers and foragers. This means a dynamic relationship between producer, the chef and Ashley is developed over time as the farmers will offer their expertise in seasonal produce in exchange for a connection to the community.
Ashley has had an intersectional career to date, all contributing to the culmination of the How We Eat initiative. Beginning within the discipline of spatial design, learning the fundamentals of design in creating spaces that shape experiences. Her time at Forever Day One consultancy developed understanding in the field of contemporary pedagogy, designing engaging learning experiences and sustainability consulting. Material research of mycelium gave insight into nature’s complex intelligence leading to thought leadership in regeneration. Other design disciplines include Human centred design, design thinking and futures thinking.
Ashley has been working in the system change for over 6 years, and study of regenerative food systems, studying the work of visionary thinkers. These two knowledge fields have dramatically influenced the development of the How We Eat program as a tool for creating systemic impact with people.
The contributions of the following experts have shaped the initiative intellectually:
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work of indigenous storytelling and the knowledge of plants
Wendel Berry’s philosophy of human responsibility in the world, particularly within the field of agriculture and land stewardship.
The visionary work of the Regenesis group have influenced the 5 regenerative principles.
System Change frameworks and methodology have been incorporated from the School of System Change. With expert contributions from: Anna Birney, Laura Winn, Rachel Phillips, Sean Andrews, Jean Boulton (complexity Theory), Glenda Euyang (Human systems dynamics), Tim Reed, Martin Hunt, Orit Gal, Payam Yuce Isik (Deep democracy), Luzette James (collaborative Practices).
Jeremy Lent’s visionary work of patterning and understanding the cultural narratives throughout history.
The value of all these disciplines has resulted in the creation of a sophisticated and in depth educational programme designed with the learning needs of people at the core.
The combination of food experiences, to learn and connect with a diverse community towards the purpose of systemic change is highly unique and socially innovative.
Within the field of sustainable food systems, regenerative agriculture is becoming known as a promising solution to how our crops are grown, as well as a focus on biodiversity and low carbon diets. These topics are entering the mainstream discourse, yet solutions within these fields are mostly at the technical level, offering practical actions that can be implemented on farms and new carbon conscious products sold in large supermarket chains. These are needed advancements, however there are very few initiatives that focus on how the fundamentals of a local regenerative food system can be formed. Nor are there many initiatives that understand the importance of engaging all stakeholders in creating a shared vision of a food system that caters for everyone.
How We Eat takes an innovative approach to pedagogy by using food as a means of knowledge sharing and learning. The dinner experiences are based upon learning through eating, learning through self and group reflection, learning through stories, learning through experience rather than knowledge delivery from expert to learner. All this learning contributes to reflecting on the current state of industrial food systems, and to shift towards a regenerative nature based, and local system.
In order for people to really contribute to shifting the way we eat, people need to be on board with the change that might land on their plate, and building a sense of belonging and ownership to the new paradigm is key for the new system to be adopted positively.
Just as food and the shared meal is universal, the holistic workshop methodology for learning through food is highly replicable to other communities interested in building a place based, community driven food future.
The basis of the initiative is to engage local people from a specific place, including all spoken and silent voices, in shaping a local, resilient food system within the boundaries of their place. This happens when the community itself understands their own needs within the offerings of the natural bioregion - what can actually be grown locally with the bio productivity of the land and the technical abilities and knowledge of the local people. While the outcomes will be vastly different depending on who and where the project scales to, the format can remain the same: engaging people in the topic of regeneration through shared experiences, learning and meals, building trust and connection throughout the programme. The result is a local community wanting to shape a local, self-sustaining, resilient food system for themselves. The underlying regenerative principles that form the basis of the learning sessions are globally applicable for all regenerative development, across any community and geography.
The methodology is to be open source, offline and online. After the series of dinners, we want to share the format with individuals, communities or organisations who are interested in running the same programme. The digital platform will be globally accessible to anyone with an internet connection, forming a global community of people wanting to hear ideas of regeneration throughout the world. Ashley is already consulting with organisations globally who wish to build similar experiences, sharing her expertise of holistic learning and hosting with others. This allows more and more people to engage in collective community building with food at the centre, with the ultimate goal of shifting the system for all to benefit.
The individual workshops are full-day experiences. To describe the flow of the day, we use digestion as a metaphor. Each workshop begins with the intake of (brain)food - the phase of "experience & learn". By spending time in and learning from nature with contributions from local experts, the regenerative principles are experienced. At this stage, the mind is expanded as much as possible.
The get-together for the shared meal is designed for networking and reflection. The ingredients are processed and the frame of what has been learned and experienced is narrowed down through cooking, eating and, most importantly, digestion of knowledge.
The result is a natural fertiliser for a collective story, made available on an open source platform, to all people in the digital space. It forms the soil on which further life (scaling projects & exchange) is created and the educational nourishment of an increasing number of people is supported.
Ashley is a curious lifelong learner, but also dyslexic. Therefore the methodology is based on her own need for learning to be fully immersive and relatable. Ashley believes this inclusive learning brings everyone to the same understanding.
Multi-perspective story building is a methodology to build empathy and wider understanding of all the stakeholders in a system. The process requires each participant to choose and embody a role different from their own (also for non-human stakeholders such as trees, plants and animals), reflecting on how they might act, think and feel, what priorities and difficulties they may experience. Then we invite participants in their new roles to respond to probing questions to expand their creativity towards a future scenario. There is no right or wrong, wild ideas are encouraged, all in the name of play and exploration. The emergent process builds upon the previous response from a different role. The result: a multi-perspective story depicting a future regenerative food vision.
The global food system is the human activity with the single biggest impact on our planet. Natural ecosystems, the land and the oceans, are responsible for all our food supplies that feed our species, without healthy ecosystems humans could not survive. Yet the way humans are globally exploiting these complex ecosystems through farming, turning land into monoculture desserts is grossly unsustainable. The industrialised food system, based upon high yield efficiency, is highly destructive to natural resources and ecosystems, so the irony is a self-sabotage of our own future survival. Not only are we destroying the future health of our global lands and oceans, but the food being produced is making the population unhealthier than before, lacking in nutrients and diversity within our diets. On top of that one third of food produced is wasted. If food waste was a country, it would be the world’s third biggest emitter of carbon, after China and the US. The direct economic cost of all this wastage is around 750 billion euros per year. All of this combined means that the way we industrially feed our populations is hugely unsustainable.
The knottiness of the food system makes driving sustainable change complex. Transitioning towards a system that supports all life on earth is vital to ensure everyone has access to healthy, culturally appropriate diets. Food and how we eat must be reflected and characterised by both local and global considerations, providing for the needs of local communities, while ensuring the production of food does not have negative impacts on the whole planetary ecosystem. In order to do so we must engage every stakeholder, business, government and organisation across the world in a localised, democratic way. We are facing a challenging mountain ahead, yet we believe the How We Eat in Leipzig project is one positive way to empower local communities to contribute to a global shift towards regeneration.
Two versions of the dinner concept have been successfully tested (shown in attached photos). The first prototype dinner in Berlin presented a five course meal for 18 people, covering five food system stories: Degenerative, Green, Sustainable, Restorative and Regenerative. This allowed guests to taste the transition towards a regenerative food system. The second dinner was hosted in Hamburg for a food production company where food industry professionals were invited to explore regenerative principles through edible stories. They were presented the 5 regenerative principles (Reciprocity, Working with Potential, Self-Organisation, Place Based and Living Systems) alongside corresponding dishes that provided a way to taste what each principle represented. We also wanted to embody the principles, for example, we asked guests to get stuck into making a dish together with no other instructions, experimenting with flavours and ingredients on the fly. This was designed for guests to embody the principle of ‘self-organisation’, to feel it rather than be told about it. The side effect: mixing people up and giving permission for creativity renewed the energy in the room, leading to the evening to conclude with a warm buzz and a twinkle in everyone’s eyes.
These two events were contained within one evening and highlighted a clear need for developing a method for participants to implement their learnings into something tangible and form a longer lasting relationship with fellow diners. Therefore for the How We Eat in Leipzig initiative, we have developed a longer format that incorporates collective storytelling into a longer integration of shaping narratives together over the course of a one year programme including 5 full day workshops.
This development is designed to produce the following outcomes as described in the rest of this application: strong community, new collective multi-voice narratives, and new learnt mindsets from different perspectives.
The How We Eat in Leipzig initiative has been developed with a belief that systems thinking is a vital skill for our future and therefore is a competency developed throughout the programme. In all five workshops nature is used as our teacher. For example, the Living Systems principle is taught in a forest workshop describing how nested systems in nature are interconnected and the multi-beneficial relationships are dependent on one another for the health of the whole ecosystem.
Using food as a metaphor to remind participants that we are part of nature, and that what we eat is grown in the natural world, with its biodiversity and complexity, is a key part to the narratives explained throughout the learning process. By inviting participants to put themselves in the shoes of nature in the story building exercise, is another tool to build competencies that promote nature.
Naturally the collective story building lends itself to developing futures literacy and exploratory thinking, by giving participants space for creative freedom in imagining a story about a new food future. See the methodology question for how this works.
Throughout the programme participants have space to reflect on their own understanding of sustainability, while engaging in new ideas of regeneration and therefore identify existing and potential values of sustainability.
Equity is also a core competency being developed, as a multi-stakeholder community is at the core of the initiative, with a large focus on building empathy for other people and nature. And finally, collective action is a key aspect of the initiative as the basis for creating a new future vision is the understanding that collectively the community in Leipzig can create local change.
