Visual Storytelling about Community Food Growing: Participatory Action Research Methods, Processes, and Wider Implications

Levidow, Les; Berardi, Andrea; Jung, Julia; Richards, Dave; McAllister, Fiona; Scott, Beth; Burton, Kath; Nuzzo, Claudia and Forest-Briand, Victoria Emanuelle (2022). Visual Storytelling about Community Food Growing: Participatory Action Research Methods, Processes, and Wider Implications. Cobra Collective.

URL: https://cobracollective.org/wp-content/uploads/202...

Abstract

The Covid-19 crisis has revealed the stark inequalities in UK society. Many vulnerable people have had more difficulty accessing food. Simultaneously, people’s social isolation prompted greater interest to continue, join or begin Community Food-Growing (CFG) initiatives. These efforts overlapped with mutual-aid networks; they initially supplied food to vulnerable people and soon expanded to wider cooperative activities.

The ‘Grassroots Visual Storytelling about Community Food-Growing’ project investigated the expansion of community food growing initiatives during the Covid-19 crisis. The project built skills in digital visual storytelling which would explore and promote participants’ experiences of CFG activities during the pandemic.

The project’s approach developed Participatory Action Research with third-sector partners which were facilitating CFG initiatives. ‘Community flourishing’ and ‘radical hopefulness’ were the key concepts that stimulated participants to plan their video stories.

The resulting stories showcased a range of benefits of community food growing activities, namely, enhancing participants’ well-being, strengthening social cohesion, localising food provision, addressing food insecurity, and building future resilience to social, environmental and economic crises. Those multiple benefits depend on staff skills, often called ‘people skills’; these facilitate cooperative, creative relationships among volunteers

The project impacts included building participants’ skills and confidence in digital storytelling. The process of creating and disseminating the stories generated deeper engagement and reflection amongst participants, directly strengthening their community food-growing initiatives.

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