Speak Up – Kōrerotia5 October 2016

Food in the city, with FESTA

Male This programme was first broadcast on Canterbury’s community access radio station Plains FM 96.9 and was made with the assistance of New Zealand on Air.

Female Coming up next conversations on human rights with “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, here on Plains FM.

Sally E ngā mana,E ngā reo,E ngā hau e whāTēnā koutou katoaNau mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”.

Tune in as our guests “Speak Up”, sharing their unique and powerful experiences and opinions and may you also be inspired to “Speak Up” when the moment is right.

Kia ora and welcome to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. Today’s show, “Food in the City,” is sponsored by Caffe Prima which is a locally owned and operated roaster in Woolston - and given that the show is all about food sustainability it’s pretty cool to know that if you pop in with your own container you can get a discount off your beans, the ones that have come direct from the roastery.

Today we’re talking Food in the City with three guests in conjunction with FESTA, the Festival of Transitional Architecture, and one of the topics I’m going to be interested to explore is, why are we talking about transitional architecture and food? But we’ll get into that, I’m sure, as we go on. Now if you guys wouldn’t mind introducing yourselves please for our listeners.

Chloe Kia ora I’m Chloe Waretini and I’m a coordinator with the Food Resilience Network in Canterbury.

Bailey Kia ora everyone, my name is Bailey Peryman and I’m co-founder, director and manager of Farming Systems for Cultivate Christchurch, an urban farming project.

Sally And is that series of urban farms or just the one on Peterborough Street?

Bailey Yes so we’re building a network of productive urban farms around Christchurch and these spaces also serve to support our young people to live lives that they value.

Sally And Chloe you mentioned the Food Resilience Network but you’re also part of many other things.

Chloe Yes I’m also coordinating the major project for FESTA this year so working with seven different architecture and design schools from around New Zealand and Australia to create 18 different architectural installations. As part of my role with the Food Resilience Network I’m leading the Ōtākaro Orchard Project which is an edible park and urban food hub which is going to be situated along the Avon River between the Town Hall and the Margaret Mahy Playground.

Sally And do we have a sense of a timeline yet for that?

Chloe We’re hoping that the garden or the landscaping is going to be done towards the end of the year and then the building coming in the second half of next year, all going well.

Sally Exciting, it’s really coming together though.

Chloe Yes we’re trying to be one of the most efficient Anchor Projects ever built in the city so far.

Sally Probably in terms of length of time I imagine it will be actually.

Chloe And I really want to show that you can build something really great in a cost effective and time efficient way while doing rich stakeholder engagement the whole way through as well, that’s really important to me.

Sally I’m sure we’ll talk a lot more about these different projects as we go on. Peter, our final guest?

Peter Kia ora, I’m Peter Langlands. I manage New Zealand Wild Capture Foraging Facebook page and just build up a group a foragers around New Zealand and just increase people’s diversity of forage foods that we have, we’re pretty lucky in the city here, we’ve got a really outstanding diversity and also out on Banks Peninsula next to the city. And I also work in with Ground Food Tours in Lyttleton who are involved with the festival this year.

Sally Great thanks! Well I guess to get our conversations started, we’re talking about food in the city, we’ve got urban farming, we’ve got urban foraging, we’ve got urban orchards and I guess lots of other things. How do we define an urban farm? What is it as opposed to a normal farm or is there a specific size? These sorts of things.

Bailey It’s a good question, the main thing for me is distinguishing it from a community garden which is something I think people in Christchurch are perhaps more familiar with. And the main point of difference being not necessarily scale, it’s more the intensity of the production that’s happening and that’s geared towards adding an enterprise or commercial component that aims to support the majority of the wider social and educational aims and purposes of the project and also within the goal

which we’re testing and working towards at the moment also is to get to a scale where that level of income and the commercial component can meet the majority of our operating costs without having to rely on external funding which gives us flexibility to operate, I think, in a more innovative and adaptable way.

Sally You mentioned social aims as well?

Bailey Absolutely. So these environments that we’re creating, first and foremost we’re testing a way of farming that is social. And that’s quite a significant challenge I think and again where the urban component meets farming - where farming we traditionally we think of a family and in particular a male figure slogging it out in the fields and there’s a lot of pressure that falls on one individual’s shoulders to produce for their community and is separated from the people who are actually consuming that food - in an urban environment you’re much closer to the people who the farm is actually serving and that relationship is strengthened and the reality of what it takes to produce our farm and what those environments are like becomes much more higher in our consciousness which I think is really important. Our relationship to food is directly proportional to the degree of health or sickness in our society which is to sort of paraphrase one of my favourite farmers, Masanobu Fukuoka, a natural farming pioneer from Japan. In Cultivate in particular we are focusing on some of our most vulnerable sectors of the population here in Christchurch and in particular our young people and especially those who have mental health issues. The farms… And the feedback we’re getting is the farms are really safe, supportive, dynamic, positive and energetic places to be for everyone. And so I think that’s where that dynamic… With the intensity of the production comes intensification and heightening of the life forces and energy that’s moving through that space then I think that lifts things up a little bit.

Chloe And the reason that I ended up working in local food and knowing that that was what I wanted to do is I studied landscape architecture and urbanism and saw that in our 20th century city-making model we were very disconnected from our communities, from the natural environment and that was causing all sorts of problems, it was causing problems with health, with crime, with social isolation and with the research that I was doing at that time local food initiatives - including farming, community gardening, sharing food together - that was shown to be the most effective activity you can do in community to breakdown those barriers and to have different kinds of people actually connect and strengthen those local bonds. And so that’s how I ended up in this. And of course having that connection to soil as well, it’s so missing in our urban lives and to how things grow. Since I was a kid I’ve always… The miracle of putting these tiny little things called seeds in the ground, giving it some water and then a few weeks later food comes out, that’s a little miracle, I’ve always been delighted by that and I think giving the chance for other people to have that as well… And so community gardens are really important but also as Bailey said, being able to have a commercial model

that allows that to be financially self-sufficient because a lot of community gardens, they’ve got one person that really champions them and when that person exhausts themselves they fall over and those are really important community assets. And even more so in the aftermath of the quakes when our food system and food supply was really disrupted we realised that these community gardens or these productive spaces within our cities, within our urban environment were actually really important assets, they weren’t just “nice to haves.”

Sally Peter, I can see you nodding away.

Peter It all resonates with me. As Bailey said it’s really about that sense of connection and with foraging there’s no better way to tune into the quality of the local environment than to go foraging because you know you’re directly collecting the food and when you eat the meal it brings back the memory of where you’ve been during the day and the people you’ve been with as well. Had a pretty busy weekend with a couple of foraging tours so still a lot of memories that are resonating just from what we’ve done. But it’s just about that sense of connection with other people, meeting a diversity of people, knowing where your food comes from is a really pivotal part of people’s health and I’m lucky to be involved with Conversations which is a group and our main push really is for people to identify where their food comes from, to know the local food producers, the local gardeners and it really is all about environmental sustainability and I think that’s one of the key things.

Sally I think that seems so nice and what you’re saying is that it’s both environmental and social sustainability; they seem to go hand-in-hand.

Chloe Absolutely and it’s all about that connection between ourselves and also to the natural environment around us.

Bailey They’re the same thing. You can’t separate them.

Peter Sort of the concept of manaaki really: just sense of place, sense of looking after people and a sense of community. With something like foraging which is quite undefined in many ways, it’s quite universal, it’s great because we’ve got a big online tribe of people now sharing information with the resources that are out there and hoping to work in with local government, local regional councils with identifying some of the more important foraging environments, just check they’re protected from spraying activities and things like that, several years ago in the drought in North Canterbury and unfortunately we had some really big watercress beds ripped out, I think unnecessarily, on a spring creek environment… so I think we’ve really got to work on environmental awareness.

Sally Peter you mentioned foraging is a wee bit undefined and I guess that’s one of my questions too, is it as simple as plucking an apple off a tree or is there something more to it to be categorised as foraging?

Peter Not really, it’s pretty universal, foraging really covers everything that gardening, fishing and hunting don’t as far as food gathering goes, that’s just everything else in between. I met my foraging group yesterday just at a carpark in Lyttleton and we actually just stopped there and then had a look and we found about 25 different types of forage foods just where there were some piles of disused soil and a bit of gravel lying around the edge of Lyttleton Port. So you can just do it anywhere at any time really and that’s what keeps it exciting. I’m building a database of what we’ve got in New Zealand as far as the species and locations go with foraging opportunities and for me being involved with quite a lot of environmental issues it really ties in a lot of interests. I’ve got a lot of friends who are environmentalists, bird researchers and entomologists and things like that all around New Zealand so it’s really good, we’re just mapping out the entire biota really and looking at what’s ethical and sustainable to eat.

Sally That sounds great and a perfect place to have our first break. We’ve got Chloe’s song ‘Marmalade.’MUSIC – MARMALADE

Sally Nau mai hoki mai, welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia.” We’re with Chloe Waretini, Bailey Perryman and Peter Langlands talking food in the city and I’m your host Sally Carlton and we’re going to pick up… We’ve just been discussing what is foraging and I know that Chloe and Bailey have got some thinking around what foraging means, I guess.

Chloe For me the really exciting thing when I’ve been to different places and gone on foraging tours is suddenly you realise that you’re surrounded by food all the time, you just didn’t recognise it. And I think kids growing up these days, they don’t really… A lot of them don’t know that food comes out of the ground or off trees and so getting them to have that awareness of that we’re actually surrounded by things that we can eat and you kind of can’t stop them growing in a way is really beautiful.

Bailey I dare say it’s not just our kids as well, it’s some of our adult population. And for me it’s the same principle really, it’s a thing about awareness and being able to see and read the landscape, like this concept of ecological literacy. It’s the same as civics I think, people have been banging on about teaching civics in high school and things like that but it’s being able to understand political systems as well as being able to understand our ecological systems and understanding that those two are actually related and that our health is connected with that as well and getting towards a more unified understanding of people and community and our landscapes, our habitat.

Chloe I had a really nice moment this morning, my vege garden has gone to seed and so it’s flowering at the moment and some of what’s flowering in there is mizuna and it’s got these beautiful yellow flowers and then I was walking along the river near the Margaret Mahy Playground and I suddenly saw a whole lot of it and I was like wow, there’s mizuna right there, a whole big patch of it, where did that come from? It’s quite cool.

Sally And is it likely to have been someone planted it or it’s just self-seeded?

Bailey Birds, windblown.

Sally It’s hard to know.

Peter We get a lot of self-seeding with foraged foods especially along coastlines and edge environments, you’ll find a lot of escaped basically seeds from people’s gardens and they’ve gone feral so it’s pretty exciting.

Bailey And I think that’s where you find… I mean I’ve been reading recently around concepts of restoration agriculture - Mark Shephard in particular from, I think, Wisconsin in the States - but he really is thinking about the resilience of the plant communities, the ones that we actively cultivate as well and it’s in these edge environments that we just leave to waste as such where you find the toughest pest- and disease-resistant productive vigorous species that perhaps are the ones we should be cultivating. But those edges at the same time, they’re places where nature can do its own creative exploration around what works and what doesn’t and plays out a whole succession thing.

Peter I think the edge environment thing is really exciting. In Canterbury we’ve lost a lot of edge environments especially with intensification of agriculture and I know Environment Canterbury have finished doing a big GIS mapping exercise and just highlighting the amount of marginal edge environments that have been lost just in the last couple of decades has been quite astounding so we really are foraging… The best areas for foraging are the areas that are most biodiverse and for me being a keen bird watcher and researcher I’m often spending time in those environments with work so it all just starts linking in together and you really just become in tune with the whole ecology but I think a lot of it is about diversity, keeping that diversity in our environment and cities are amazing environments for diversities by the nature of everyone’s gardens.

Bailey A lot of edges as well.

Peter A lot of edges and then banging on that we’ve got Banks Peninsula which I think is one of the best foraging zones in New Zealand just because of the sheer diversity of landscapes and microclimates, a lot of native and a lot of introduced species, a lot of species have their southern limit on Banks Peninsula like kawakawa and things like that so it’s just all about diversity.

Sally We’ve been talking quite a bit about the unique biodiversity of Canterbury and I guess if we’re looking at Christchurch as a city, have you noticed people’s attitudes changing over the last few years to concepts of urban food and I guess particularly foraging and farming?

Chloe I’m quite new to Christchurch, I’ve just been here less than two years, but one of the things that I was really excited by when I first arrived was going along to one of the Food Resilience Network meetings and seeing how much momentum was happening there and how many diverse people were engaged. There were people there from Council, there were people there from the DHB, there were guerrilla gardeners, there were chefs, there were farmers and they were all working together and I was like wow, this is totally amazing, this is what I’ve been looking for and what I was trying to get up and running in Auckland which is where I was previously. And so I feel like the earthquakes have been a real stimulus in Canterbury becoming a real leader in New Zealand in this consciousness around food. And the chefs that I talk to as well say that Christchurch is the most exciting place in New Zealand to be working because of that local food ethos.

Bailey Well, within a 500m radius now and just north of the river around Peterborough Street you have three urban farming projects and it’s quite amazing when you think, sure they are transitional which is fantastic but 500m east is the beginning of the residential red zone and that’s no doubt a place where these initiatives can take root a lot deeper literally and also closer to suburban populations, bring this… And there are pockets like that all throughout Christchurch where effectively we on a global scale there’s some interesting being done on this and now contextualising this to Christchurch – we are a rural town, on a small scale with a low density so urban agriculture is… There’s so much space for it, so much opportunity and the intensity of production that you can get given the diversity of the landscape opportunities and those edges with the very, very beginning of something that I think will become a really attractive part of the city in the long run.

Chloe I mean Christchurch is designed as a garden city which is a model that came out in the early 20th century to combat the ills of industrial pollution and give green spaces to give people the health in the city and I really have thought a lot about what is a 21st century garden city and to me, with climate change and food miles and carbon and all of that kind of stuff, having a city that feeds itself seems to be the ideal thing that a 21st garden city would do.

Bailey And it’s also the opportunity for people to carve out a livelihood doing this, there are so many people that come to us every week who not only will just give their time and volunteer but we can reciprocate because we’re producing at that intensity, the very least we can do is put on a lunch and send people home with a bag of something nice. But increasingly we are able to offer employment and say it’s this, it’s the wild west effectively for innovation, local food is because there’s so many opportunities from… You could just specialise in making salsa, there are so many different options! And so people we’re working with now, we kind of just say what’s your wildest dreams and how can we support that and let’s start today with…

Peter It’s getting really exciting with foraged foods as we go into different ways of preserving, fermenting, just all the derivatives, things we can do and some pretty outstanding… There’s a book that’s come out called Wildcrafted Cuisine by an American author Pascal Baudar and it’s just a seminal work of what you can do as far as preserving, fermenting, processing wild foods and just the diversity of flavours you’ll get from an already very diverse food base. We’ve got over 2,500 species of wild food in New Zealand at least and we’re still counting and finding new things so it’s just all about that diversity, all about the health. And I think a lot of the food thing is about getting diversity back when we’re living in a country where the Government agenda is the double dairying in ten years, we’re running against that tide of economic push and I think a lot of people are feeling quite disenfranchised now because we’re seeing massive water quality issues taking place with ground water resources and we’re losing a lot of environmental diversity. I’ve driven across the Canterbury Plains and you’ll just see shelter belts that have been bulldozed into piles and you’ll see all these smoking piles of massive amounts of carbon going into the atmosphere and lots and lots of shelter belts being ripped out. A friend of mine who is an arborist, he just ripped out a whole lot of sweet chestnut trees recently. And so this Government agenda of just intensifying and doing a bulk product is… I think a lot of people are getting quite concerned about it now.

Sally It seems to me like - and this is from looking very much from the outside, I’m not in the food network, I guess - it seems to me like as a result of what you’re talking about, the economic… that push for agriculture on a great scale but also I think the earthquakes as well and that realisation of the power of the individual to look after themselves and I guess that kind of ties into the growth of farmers markets and organic produce and I guess for me that’s kind of almost like a middle class, neoliberal movement as well and I guess there’s some sort of tension there maybe?

Peter There is, it’s a very polarised situation in all honesty. It almost feels like a form of warfare at times, like guerrilla gardeners and things like that, it’s all go. We’re living in a very polarised world, the Government wants to really streamline through production into a very narrow base to increase taxation and revenue and to have it all clearly defined, a lot of people go out foraging and are involved in community gardens, the Government realistically potentially is going to miss out on a lot of tax revenue and a lot of businesses and things are involved in setting it up so everything is kept streamlined and it’s all about money. And it’s far more than about money, people’s mental health, people’s physical health, people being able to experience a diversity of food.

We’ve got some absolutely horrific things happening with food at the moment especially… It’s a bit of a detour but with seafood, we’ve got seafood that’s caught in New Zealand waters then exported and reprocessed into new products and then brought back into New Zealand and if you go to a supermarket in New Zealand now, a lot of our seafood is actually imported which is just absolutely ridiculous. We’ve got one of

the best diversities of high quality seafood in the world yet for the bulk of our people we’re importing fish and the food miles are absolutely astronomical, there’s issues with slavery on foreign fishing boats as well, lots of human rights issues. So for me when I’m out foraging I like to take a fishing rod and just catch some fish locally and fresh. I know I’ve caught the fish and where I’ve caught it from and just last night I was fishing on the wharf at Port Levy and just fried up some mullet on the wharf, it’s a really satisfying and empowering feeling, being able to go out and get your own food or grow your own food and especially if it’s with other people as well because there’s a collective knowledge which is shared.

Sally That’s beautiful. OK it seems like a good point to have your song Peter, George Harrison.

MUSIC BY GEORGE HARRISON – CLOUD NINESally Welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, I’m your host Sally Carlton

and we’re on Plains FM 96.9 and we’re going to pick up talking about food justice and maybe Bailey you can kick us off here.

Bailey I think continuing on with that line of enquiry, I guess, where just acknowledging that food justice, food sovereignty and in simple terms the right for people to have a connection with their source of sustenance and to cultivate that, I think it’s something we’re definitely aware of and doing our utmost to put in place structures and systems and ways of working together which I learnt through my time doing community gardening but wanted to take to a level where it was: a) it’s kind of riding out the end of our current financial system which we know is flawed and doing the best we can to use those resources now to set up a system which is going to support a cooperative food commons regime rather than an industrial corporate food regime and within that are people and that’s basically every day when we begin…

For example when we began down in the Peterborough site there was already a community there and although the space may look vacant and neglected there was a community who used that space and who continue to use that space with us there doing what we do, we co-exist and these are supposedly the disenfranchised or the disconnected or socially isolated people of our community, homeless people, street-based communities and workers and we have a fantastic relationship with them and they work alongside us. We always encourage them to come and take food whenever they like and even create spaces within our farm environment which is constantly adapting but we accommodate that and it’s that… We could be on that whole gentrification buzz and land values and all that kind of thing, that’s the tightrope we’re walking because land values in other areas where urban agriculture has taken off, land value has increased, but we want our staff for example to perhaps even be living on site or in the neighbourhood, a farm needs immediate and constant 24/7 care and attention particularly if you’re going to introduce animals and who of our relatively low income staff

including myself, there’s no way we can look at affording housing in the east frame or somewhere like that where residential land is being acquired and developed. Again, coming back to that point earlier, our health system, our political system, all of it is interconnected and housing is the biggest barrier for Cultivate now, it’s not for the lack of land or productive potential for support, it’s actually about busting through a critical mass related to our livelihoods. And yeah we’re butting up against an economic paradigm which doesn’t acknowledge the value of our foraging environments, where our food comes from, the people who are involved in that process. So food justice is fundamental to what we do to the point where we don’t even name it, it’s just inherent.

Chloe And with the Ōtākaro Orchard Project as well, it’s going to have a building on it but it’s going to be half an acre of productive land with an orchard on it, with vegetable beds, all of that kind of stuff, none of its going to be fenced and the Food Resilience Network has been working with the Council over the past couple of years to try and help them feel OK about having food in public parks, in the public realm and there’s all of these things like what about rats, what about oh people will just come in and steal, they’ll throw food at each other rather than eat it. And it’s just all of these things are barriers that we’re having to overcome and by having this really high profile centre city example of having edibles as a basis for beautiful landscaping as well in recreational space actually works, that’s one of the core purposes of that project as well is to be an exemplar and a precedent in that area.

Bailey And when we first became transitional custodians, I like to say, or stewards, of the Peterborough site one of the neighbours said oh there’s a lot of delinquents that move through the site and we’ve come to know those delinquents and they are so respectful and despite all the activities which are going on all through the night and 24/7 basically, tidy up after themselves, we hardly ever find any rubbish and it’s just not an issue. And people ask that question of do you have any problems with people taking food? and it’s like well that’s why we’re there. And if somebody doesn’t feel safe enough to come in while we’re there and join in with what we’re doing and take the food then actually we’ve got to look at ourselves and say what is it about this space which makes somebody feel uncomfortable to the point where they don’t want to come in while we’re here, they would rather come in and take while we’re not there? And we’re totally fine with that because we are producing food for our community in simple terms and we’ve really got to… There’s no way we’re going to be putting up barbed wire fences so anything like that, like we’ve got to look at ourselves and how we create an atmosphere and an environment that’s warm and open and inclusive, safe, welcoming.

Chloe And the best security is connection and increasing stewardship within the community that’s there and so that’s what I think all of these projects have in common.

Peter For sure and especially with foraging and that, just brings people directly

into the environment and there’s really no better measure of the quality of the local environment than being able to forage from it. And I think local councils might be challenged by the fact that lots of people will be out there potentially getting food but then that puts the onus back on the council to make sure we look after the quality of our environment. I’ve been involved a lot with recreational fishing, we used to have a lot of major water quality issues with the Lower Waimakariri River which is an amazing area for mahinga kai, one of the most productive rivers in New Zealand - diverse whitebait, kawai, trout, salmon fisheries, flounder fisheries - and it’s only really through fisherman and people being out in the environment that local authorities are often made aware of environmental issues. It’s a bit of a vexed one but overall I’m in favour of white baiting because again it gets people out in local rivers and streams and at least tunes people into the quality of the environment, I like to really have that direct sense of connection. It’s been challenging for me at times though, I’ve been involved a lot with Forest & Bird and they seem to have a policy - well I don’t know how they stand on foraging - but for me its environmental awareness is really important and just getting people out. Some harvesting there is some impact on environmental resources but overall a lot of it is very sustainable and with foraging we’re lucky because we’ve got such a diversity of species in locations that we can just basically skim the tip of the iceberg and not really have any major environmental impact.

Sally Chloe you mentioned the Council being a little nervous about the Ōtākaro Orchard, is that partly because of legalities do you think? Like if we put these trees here we’re then responsible…

Chloe Well they’re not putting those trees… That’s one of the things that’s actually worked quite well and has been a solution to putting trees, productive trees in public spaces, is that the community stewards them rather than the Council and so the community buys them and looks after them. And there’s a number of community gardens and orchards around the city that have done that really successfully and all of these examples are just helping to show oh this can be a really positive thing. And also the residential red zone, I remember the past couple of years once they opened it up and had mapped all those fruit trees and you go out there on the weekend and there’s lots of people walking around and cycling around and it’s almost like a treasure hunt because it’s like oh, what have you found. And I ended up chatting to someone and he’s like wow, I live in town and I’ve got this grapefruit tree and I don’t eat grapefruit, would you like to come over and grab some and then he gave me some seedlings as well and then the next week I’ll drop in some other seedlings of something else to him and that generosity that seems to be around food and foraging is so beautiful because it really… It’s the opposite of stranger danger in a way and it just shows… I would rather trust people first and trust that they’re good people and food just seems to be a way and cultivating food together, foraging food together, sharing and eating food together, just seems to be something that promotes trust and generosity in a way that I haven’t seen with any other community

activities.

Bailey And I think it’s easy to understand why - and it’s only really within the Parks and Reserves Unit at Council and I don’t want to point any fingers or lay any blame whatsoever because I can totally understand with their budgets being cut, they have a large undertaking in managing our parks and reserves and the willingness is there to begin forming relationships with community groups. We’ve got to -“we” being the community, people out there who want to do these things - need to demonstrate some credibility as well, I think there’s a whole lot of responsibility that we need to take to show that we’re not just going to chuck in a few trees and create a mess which is going to ultimately add to the maintenance budget which is already strained. So I can totally understand the situation and I think everybody is getting onto that same page now so it’s like OK, where do we need to invest in order to build the capability and demonstrate and just start with a few small pockets? I think it’s going to happen - it has to - and if only because there’s just so much more awareness now. Which I guess answers an earlier question in this discussion about a change in the Christchurch community, yeah totally there has been.

Chloe And it’s part of the greater shift as well, I think, that’s happened since the quakes of Christchurch citizens wanting to take greater ownership and agency over their urban environment and their neighbourhoods and that’s why FESTA is important because of course FESTA has been one of those things of… The purpose of that festival is to get more people involved in city making, in shaping and creating our urban environment and prototyping different ways to do that and so food is an intrinsic part.

Bailey And the urban farming we’ve developed with Cultivate is my third attempt in something which is consciously attempting to do urban agriculture but it started within the context of creating something for FESTA. In 2013 with Jess Halliday we developed Acropolis and it was fantastic and the learnings from that very much have been adapted and adopted within Cultivate and structures like the Life in Vacant Spaces Trust give you enough leeway to explore and experience and learn but enough security as well to protect you in your failures and the failure is inevitable. And it’s at that point where really it’s about building trust, building experience and learning and adapting and that’s what the transitional movement is about and we’re going to be doing that… Since year dot we’ve been doing this as a civilisation and who knows where we’re going…

Sally It’s nice to think it’s going to continue long term though, isn’t it?

Bailey Exactly, it’s not temporary.

Chloe And there’s the transition from the earthquakes to creating a liveable city again but there’s also the greater transition of our economic paradigm and the butting up against the limits of our planet, of the resources there, there’s the longer transition as well that’s going to continue throughout

our lifetimes.

Sally Just to finish up, then, have you got any thoughts on what people can do if they’re interested in taking part? What kind of activities can they take part in FESTA?

Peter Yes I’ll be taking out a foraging tour, working with Ground Foraging tours in Lyttleton and so we’ll be running a foraging trip that people can come along to and just looking at a wide range of environments close to the city, in and around the city.

Bailey At Cultivate we’re developing a kitchen garden and that is a place where you can explore all the different ways that everybody - whether you have just a windowsill or a lovely quarter acre or a lifestyle block or whatever, any little bit of space that you can grow food and you can do it at little or no cost - it’s also an opportunity for people to come in and see what we do at the Peterborough urban farm. So we’ll be running a kitchen gardening workshop with lots of take home bits and pieces, seeds, seedlings and holding a tour and a lunch.

Sally And we can do a plug for it because Bailey brought in some produce from the garden which is sitting here in front of us right now.

Peter Just briefly expanding on what Bailey said, what I’m really interested with foraging now is actually collecting foraged foods and bringing them back into the garden and gardening with them as well. So some species like native celery you can grow and it just takes the pressure off a wild resource. So it’s just about that diversity and really increase the diversity of what you can garden.

Chloe And the Ōtākaro Orchard is currently surrounded on three sides by construction so we can’t… And it’s mostly just a big pile of rubble still while we’re fundraising to get our garden in and our hub so we can’t safely have anyone on the site during FESTA probably, but we are working for Lean Means which is the major FESTA event where we create a temporary city in and around the art gallery, that whole block, take over that. We’re working with some Masters of Architecture students from UTS in Sydney who are creating a bespoke dining pavilion for us, we will have a pop up restaurant that night on Saturday the 22nd partnering with Chef Alex Davies who has been a real pioneer in using local foods here and we’re creating a dining experience where you’ve got the full food chain in one space. So across the pavilion there will be some food growing and then picking, processing, cooking, consuming and then composting as you move through the experience so we’re really excited about that and the pavilion that they create is going to be a big table and some other pieces that we’ll be able to then take back to our space to use to host other events so it’s really exciting to be working with them.

Sally They sound like three really good examples of exactly what you’ve been

talking about, this fusion between environmental and social sustainability so very exciting and thank you so much for taking the time to come and share your wisdom with us today.

Bailey Thanks.

Chloe Thanks for having us.

Peter Thanks for the opportunity.

Sally And for the listeners don’t forget to check out our Facebook page, we’ll make sure we put up the links to your guys Facebook info as well. Kia ora.

We’d like to say a big thank you, kia ora, once again to Caffe Prima for sponsoring this Food in the City show and we’ve just got time now for… Bailey has chosen us a song which is ‘Silver Spoon’ by Paul Kantner and Grace Slick.

MUSIC BY PAUL KANTNER AND GRACE SLICK – SILVER SPOON