Abstract
AbstractThe rise of Urban Agriculture projects across the UK has led to a surge of interest in their efficacy and resulting social impacts. Real Food Wythenshawe is a Lottery-funded urban food project in the UK that aims to teach the population of Wythenshawe to grow their own food and to cook from scratch. The area, popularly referred to as ‘Europe's largest council estate’, suffers from high levels of deprivation and has been described as a ‘food desert’ due to a perceived lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables (Small World Consulting, 2013). In order to encourage Wythenshawe residents to grow their own food and to increase access to fresh fruit and vegetables, Real Food Wythenshawe aims to transform unused areas of land into growing spaces, such as allotments and community gardens. This paper focuses on research conducted at a community garden in Wythenshawe, established by Real Food Wythenshawe as an example of a ‘meanwhile’ or temporary growing site for people affected by cancer. The research investigated the impact of the growing activities on community garden participants through a series of observations and interviews. The findings suggest that the benefits of the space were multiple and diverse, ranging from increased growing knowledge to therapeutic effects, while there has been minimal effect on participants’ dietary behavior. The organization of the community garden also raises questions over some of the practicalities of temporary urban growing sites and highlights the tensions that can arise between small community growing groups and larger institutions with control over land use. These findings add to a growing body of research that considers the value of growing in the city and reflects on the role of community gardening in deprived urban areas of the UK.
Highlights
Urban AgricultureBroadly speaking, the term Urban Agriculture (UA) describes ‘the rearing of livestock and/or produce in the city context’ (Hardman and Larkham, 2014, p. 2)
While private and allotment gardening in towns and cities have a long tradition in the UK, the commercial cultivation of crops in urban areas, as opposed to individuals growing for leisure or personal subsistence, is a relatively novel concept with the practice only recently gaining academic attention in Europe (Hardman and Larkham, 2014)
The study site providing the focus of this paper, the Macmillan community garden, was situated on the first piece of land that Real Food Wythenshawe (RFW) secured from WCHG and was developed in partnership with the Macmillan Cancer Support charity for people affected by cancer
Summary
The term Urban Agriculture (UA) describes ‘the rearing of livestock and/or produce in the city context’ (Hardman and Larkham, 2014, p. 2). Types of UA range from the small scale, such as allotments, rooftop gardens, windowsills, beehives, community gardens or growing spaces in an around housing estates, to the larger scale of orchards, urban farms and land sharing schemes (Ackerman, 2012; Bryant, 2012; Battersby and Marshak, 2013; Tornaghi, 2014). The design encouraged urban growing with the provision of space for food cultivation to bring residents ‘back to the land’ and increase access to fresh food (Howe and Wheeler, 1999; Hall, 2002; Battersby and Marshak, 2013). The study site providing the focus of this paper, the Macmillan community garden, was situated on the first piece of land that RFW secured from WCHG and was developed in partnership with the Macmillan Cancer Support charity for people affected by cancer. The growing site was located in Benchill, an area of particular deprivation in Wythenshawe; ranking 441 of 32,844 on the Index of Multiple Deprivation, with 1 being the most deprived and 32,844 being the least deprived (Open Data Communities, 2015)
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