Art+Agriculture #2
The second edition of our film/lecture/performance series was held April 28, 2011 at Washington Hall.
The event featured Novella Carpenter (author of FARM CITY) with musical guest okanomodé (stop-your-heart performer), and a panel of farmers and organizers on the theme of Urban Farming and Food Justice.
Novella entrhalled and encouraged the audience with stories of her urban farm in Oakland, okanomodé performed songs from Stevie Wonder's "The Secret Life of Plants," and Eddie Hill led a discussion with Rev. Robert Jeffrey (Clean Greens), Maria Elena Rodriguez (Community Alliance for Global Justice), Erick Haackenson (Jubilee Farm), Rosy Smit (21 Acres), and Sean Conroe (Alleycat Acres).
Around the ballroom, our "Urban Ag Bazaar" included Seattle Tilth's Garden Hotline, the Central Co-op, Seattle Farm Co-op, Beacon Food Forest, Cascadian Edible Landscapes, and Community Alliance for Global Justice.
Proceeds went to benefit Alleycat Acres. The program was supported by: The Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, University Bookstore, The Living Room, and the Central Co-op.
Thanks everyone who participated! Some additional photos from the event are viewable here.
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PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS
Carpenter, who used to raise bees on her porch on Beacon Hill, moved to Oakland in 2001 to study under Michael Pollen at UC Berkeley. Her beekeeping operation expanded into chickens, rabbits, pigs, and more, an adventure she chronicles in her bestseller FARM CITY.
A child of back-to-the-land hippies, Carpenter grew up in Idaho and Washington State, and majored in Biology and English at the University of Washington. Along with her current work as a freelance journalist and writer, she has also been an assassin bug handler, book editor, media projectionist, and hamster oocyte collector.
Toting the super-hero swag of Grace Jones and Isaac Hayes, the sensuality of Minnie Ripperton and Marvin Gaye, the iconic glam of Josephine Baker and Prince, and the galactic style of Labelle and Parliament Funkadelic, okanomodé redefines genre and gender.
The alter-ego of performance artist SoulChilde BlueSun, okanomodé is a regularly featured vocalist for deep-house diva Nadirah Shakoor and has shared the stage with artists Yahzarah, Choklate, Ursula Rucker, Osunlade, Digable Planets, and Janelle Monae.
He has been featured vocalist and writer for numerous projects including the free jazz ensemble "Threat Of Beauty" (Evan Flory-Barnes), Funk/Afro-Carribean band Big World Breaks, and the New Seattle Brass Ensemble with Ahamefule J. Oluo. He is the writer of "luci's lamb," a post-punk epic faerie tale re-imagining the relationship between Jesus & Lucifer (co-composed with Ahamefule J. Oluo).
In 2007, longtime church leader, civil rights activist, and community organizer Dr. Jeffrey started the Clean Greens Project, a 22-acre chemical-free farm in Duvall, WA. The farm employs people from the African-American community and produces healthy vegetables to sell at low cost in order to reduce the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.
A member of Regional Food Policy Council, Dr. Jeffrey has always been a community leader, serving on the Governor Gregoire's transitional team and on numerous boards including those of the Boys and Girls Club of Seattle, the Church Council of Greater Seattle, and Washington State SANE/Freeze. In 1988, Pastor Jeffrey founded the Black Dollar Days Task Force (BDDTF), a non-profit organization committed to facilitating economic self-sufficiency for inner-city African Americans.
Rev. Jeffrey has received numerous awards including the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award and the W.E.B. Dubois Talented Tenth Award.
The founding Director of Creatives4Community, Hill has worked locally and nationally to influence local green policies and practices, and to help drive diversification of urban agriculture, urban planning and community food systems development in the Northwest. He is currently managing 62 youth and 14 staff in four programs providing an introduction to urban agriculture and urban ecology as well as stewarding over 12 acres of urban land.
With a team of other professionals, Hill started a successful urban sustainability certification program serving Seattle teens in Seattle called GroundUp Organics. GroundUp operates an organic farm at Yesler Terrace and has helped broker community land use agreements with local agencies for increased organics composting and food production in the Central and Southend of Seattle.
Hill serves on City planning and policy committees, works to create green employment opportunities, speaks on green jobs equity and carbon neutrality, and is helping to connect and weave together regional public, private, and non-profit entities into a “net that helps catch those that are falling between the cracks” in the evolving green sustainability and food movements.
A graduate of the University of Washington, Rodriguez served as the Community Alliance for Global Justice's (CAGJ) Food Justice Project Co-Coordinator. While there, she co-directed the creation of CAGJ’s first publication, Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice (2009).
The book is a hands-on guide and recipe book that engages people in the struggle for food justice both locally and globally. Rodriguez is currently assisting with the production of a second expanded edition.
Rodriguez became involved with CAGJ because she was inspired by the work being done surrounding issues of access to food within anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and food sovereignty frameworks. She currently works in the non-profit hunger relief field and volunteers with Lettuce Link and Marra Farm, distributing seeds and gardening information at food banks and growing organic vegetables for food bank clients.
Rosy Smit grew up on a dairy farm and has always worked in agriculture, mostly organic. A recent Canadian transplant to Seattle, she was an environmental farm planning advisor in British Columbia, started the University of British Columbia farm (specifically the market garden at UBC Farm) and has two degrees in soil science. Since June of 2010 Rosy has been the Farm Manager at 21 Acres in Woodinville.
Erick Haakenson, along with his wife and partner Wendy, owns and manage Jubilee Biodynamic Farm in Carnation. This season will be Jubilee’s 17th year of providing weekly boxes of produce to its CSA members. The motto of Erick and Wendy’s farm is taken from an essay by Wendell Berry: “this much, but not more.” As a Biodynamic farm, Jubilee is striving toward (and close to achieving) the goal of raising all its own fertility. This is done through nutrient cycling of the composted manure from their herd of 70 cows.
Like so many things in life, Erick and Wendy believe that farming is and must be a balance between what goes into the farm, and what is taken out: which means a balance between the nutrients captured and passed on by the herd and the produce the farm grows. Jubilee Farm endorses without apology an ontological commitment to the conviction that people, animals, and every member of earth’s biotic and non-biotic community are more than simply machines, that each has moral standing, and that therefore each is worthy of respect.
Sean Conroe, founder of Alleycat Acres Urban Farm Collective, grew up working on gardens and farms in upstate New York. His family moved to Las Vegas in his late teens, where his connection with the land, and food, was lost. But he was soon reintroduced to nature after moving to Seattle in 2004. Through his volunteer experience at Bullock's Permaculture Homestead and his food-focused coursework at Seattle Central Community College, Sean started thinking about creating an organization that could help reconnect people to food and to the land that enables us to live.