Imagining New Agricultural Landscape of Providence, Jisu Yang, B.Arch, Architecture, 2021

Changes happen when people who hold similar missions gather to form a community. At the beginning of my fellowship, Eliza and I visited Father Lennon community garden, a 50ft x 70ft sized plot located along Camden Avenue. What really surprised us was that the garden is entirely covered with weed and it did not have any vegetables growing on the land. I felt a strong urge to raise more attention in this garden since, with a little bit of help, the garden may grow and flourish as an active food hub for the neighborhood. The challenge was that the neighborhood was a low-income housing area where people did not have access to phones and computers. Hence it was difficult to establish a solid structure for organizing the garden. 

When I raised this issue to my supervisor, I was notified that there is a clear boundary for how much government can provide support for individual gardens. Community garden gets established because the community gathers and requests the government to provide fundamental resources such as land and water. Yet, it is not the responsibility of the government to maintain individual organizations of the garden and if this becomes the task, they cannot maintain large network of the garden system. 

Instead of giving up, what I chose to do is to reach out to Eliza and see if there is anything we can do to re-activate the garden. Looking at the map, I realized that the community garden is located between the Recreation center and elementary school. Although those institutions do not hold responsibility for taking care of the garden, I imagined what if they collaborate to run programs for participants and students and maintain the garden? In this case, it is a win-win situation for both academic institutions and community gardens? I shared all of these thoughts with Eliza and she also thought it was a great idea to maximize assets of existing contexts. After reaching out to Shawn from the Recreation center, we had a meeting and eventually organized a date for communal weeding! Fortunately, we were able to find a connection with the organization in Providence College who are commissioned to do service for community works! August 25, there were lots of people including students from Providence College and people from the neighborhood who gathered and helped clean the garden to have it ready for fall seeding! 

Prairie street view

Imagining a new street with more agricultural practice in Providence

My ultimate learning from working with the Parks department is that there has already been a lot of movements on urban farming and food justice. My focus during the fellowship was to create a common ground where different organizations and movements come together. As an architecture student, I often imagine what would it be like if the reality is a little different from what is right now. August 27th, on my last day of working in the Parks Department Botanical Center, I couldn’t stop but keep thinking what would it be like to walk along the street that is full of trees and planters? What would it be like if these dead parking lots are turned into public gardens? What would it be like to take berries from the street when I feel hungry? What would it be like to encounter a pocket of green space in the middle of a dense urban district? What would it be like to harvest corn next to the bus station every morning on my way to work? What would it be like to go out on the street every weekend with my children to take care of trees and planters?  

How do we make this happen?

To make imagination come true, I believe we need to form a community of people who hold similar faith, who is aware of the environment and who believes in creating a better world by making simple changes. Although my fellowship ends, I gained huge confidence and courage to continue my research and role as an environmental activist to seek other opportunities to work with the community leaders in Providence to construct new branding of urban agriculture in Providence.

Connecting the dots: How Does Communication Improve The Equity of the Urban Food Cycle? | Jisu Yang | BFA Architecture 2021

As there isn’t any collective database for community gardens in Providence, my idea of mapping and revealing the profile of gardens became an essential project for my fellowship period which was originally mentioned in the first blog. So how has that been going? 

As I visit community gardens and meet people, the point in the map increases. A single dot is not interesting but if there are many of them, it has a stronger capacity to bring more attraction. The collective entity forms a larger movement of urban agriculture in Providence. 

The Parks Department already has an on-going Story Map for public parks on their website. The information I collected will be simply added to the original platform. There was a conversation on how do we include community gardens that are affiliated with non-profit organizations. I encouraged them to be as inclusive as possible since the garden movement has a much stronger impact when we see all the organizations associated in one space. Eventually, the agreement was to have two separate tabs: one is “Providence Parks Community Garden” and the other is “Community Garden Affiliated with NGOs”. The latter will have a link and description to all the organizations that support urban agriculture and how they operate. Some of them have an integral relationship with other organizations and the growth of the city, forming a network of food cycles in Providence. 

Click here for the Link to the StoryMap

James Cornell in the “The Agency of Mapping” describes the following:

“Mapping is a fantastic cultural project, creating and building the world as much as measuring and describing it. Long affiliated with the planning and design of cities, landscapes, and buildings, mapping is particularly instrumental in constructing and constructing of lived space. In this active sense, the function of mapping is less to mirror reality than to engender the re-shaping of the worlds in which people live.”

Endorsing Cornell’s point, I believe that the impact of the map is not just reflecting how many gardens exist but imagining how much more these gardens can grow to construct a sustainable food cycle in the city. In other words, it provides opportunities for organizations and the community to form a new relationship. 

A community garden in Amos House that opened last year!

Amos House is a social organization that supports people who are often neglected by society. They work with other organizations such as Southside Community Land Trust, Sankofa, and the City of Providence to organize programs and job opportunities. After meeting with Kali who is a program coordinator at Amos House, I had a great chance to meet with Michael who is the chief of the Soup Kitchen at Amos House. He allowed me to realize that food is the ultimate element that completes the cycle of farming. 

Amos House Soup Kitchen runs a food recovery program where the organization affords approximately 13,000 people a month for both breakfast and lunch. Since they have a limited budget, the Food Recovery Program essentially allows them to collect wasted food from shops, markets, and farmlands and recover the food by instantly providing to people in need. Although their budget of $10,000 is not enough for providing an extensive amount of meals, the Recovery Program makes this impossible possible. They have a system of visiting all the shops and farms they are affiliated with through foodbank in Cranston. The shops include Wholefood, Hope’s Harvest by Farm Fresh RI, bakery shops in downtown Providence and Gotham Green… etc. 

When I showed Michael my project on StoryMap, he was very excited and told me that this is a great platform for him to utilize. Putting into his words, “Your work is essentially connecting dots and this is really important because someone like me can call a garden and ask for any crops that get wasted!! This kind of platform does not exist and as a result, a lot of people do not understand what are existing supports they can get. I know there are lots of community farming that I might have overlooked and it would be great to know where they are so I can get more resources!”

It is very important to have a common connection. Urban agriculture in Providence entails lots of challenges. There is always an issue with soil since the district has industrial remnant and it does not always have enough labor support to sustain the garden in the city. By pin-pointing where things are, the map essentially opens up new opportunities for people to work together and collaborate to construct a sustainable food network by sharing resources.

The Core Mission I Hold: To Make Creative Suggestions – Jisu Yang, B.Arch, Architecture, 2021

As a month has passed since my fellowship started, the core question I had in my mind was what is the true mission I hold as the Maharam STEAM Fellow. Last week, I had a meeting with Sue Anderbois and she helped me redefine what is the true mission I want to serve as a fellow. Sue is a director of the Food Strategy and she supports a local food system and fights for anti-hunger. Her position is very unique because, witnessing problems of communication, she invented her own job in the government. She has the flexibility to work interdisciplinarily as she listens to people from different organizations and individuals of the community. She seeks opportunities where they can interact and have a partnership through innovative projects. I truly enjoyed listening to her mission as her flexibility and innovative pursuit resembled the core mission of Maharam. Over the month, I was thrilled with exciting projects and ideas that came up through visiting sites and meeting community leaders. However, as my ambition grows, I encountered numerous challenges that relate to responsibility and limits of time and budget. I am a young designer who is very passionate about working with the community. However, how should I balance the line between my limit and aspiration?  

Eliza is my colleague who received a year grant for facilitating a large network of community gardens owned by the City. She is a perfect partner with me because we visit a lot of community gardeners and discuss problems together. One of the most recurring topics of the challenge was the absence of visual signage for people to identify the garden. When I visited Joslin Park Community Garden to meet Roby, who is the garden leader, she was very interested in installing physical signage. According to Roby, a lot of gardeners are unfamiliar with digital media and the way people get involved in the team is by visiting the garden in person. If there were physical signage, it would be a lot easier to gather attention from the street. 

As a designer, I have a tendency to imagine what is possible when I listen to problems people have. Although it was not a request for me, here I am designing a street interactive signage for the community garden. I am planning to include chalkboard as part of the signage to write down their open garden workshops or public events. The visual description of the plant can relate to special vegetables people grow in their own garden. In other words, the template of signage can start to provide consistency and brand of community garden but still possess individuality based on the plant’s that people grow.

This is the original signage for the park and I overlaid a new design of the signage for the community garden! 

So, how did I make this happen? I requested a meeting with Wendy who is a superintendent of the Parks Department. I showed her the design overlaid on existing Park signage and told her what can be possible with a simple gesture. Fortunately, she was very accepting and gave me the budget and feedback to proceed with the project! As I still have a story map project going, I will only produce signage for one community garden during this fellowship period and if it works well, it can be manufactured on a larger scale in the future. From this, I learned that creative individual works with the challenge by observing struggles people encounter and make actions through imagining what is possible in the situation.

Another mission I hold as a Maharam Fellow is to seek opportunities for partnering with other organizations for serving the need that the government cannot provide. I enjoyed visiting the Davis Park Community garden a lot and it was exciting to hear visions the leaders had in growing their garden. Nina, the garden leader, shared an interesting idea where she wants to install furniture that provides opportunities for gathering people from the park. As a buffer space, the current field between the park and the community garden is underutilized as an empty lot. By installing a shelter that also provides a sitting space, Nina imagined activating the space by installing the furniture that responds to the public park and the community garden.

A map of Davis Park Community Garden in the context of the park and urban district. The red curve indicates the space Nina imagines to have a piece of furniture for gathering people toward the garden.

As an architecture student, I was really interested in working with Nina to design furniture. As I presented the idea, I encountered challenges. My position as an intern in the Botanical center that is part of the Parks Department and the City of Providence implies the responsibility of the government for every action I make. There is a boundary in how much government can offer in order to sustain a larger network of relationships and support community gardens on a city scale. 

As I was talking to Laura, a professor of RISD Architecture and who is a great mentor to me, she encouraged me to reach out to DownCity Design. Every year, the organization provides a grant to one RISD student to lead a workshop that provides a build-up structure for the community. Although I was very frustrated to face restrictions, this situation encouraged me to reach out to other organizations that can work with the government and the community to serve creative visions of the individuals. Once I got the idea of working with DownCity Design, I suddenly imagined how the project can grow to become more equitable and comprehensive for other community gardens that can benefit from this design. The challenge will reoccur in terms of time and budget but the limit is what motivates me to find another resource that helps me grow the project and make a larger impact on the community.

This was a great learning for me to understand how collaborative work with a non-profit is another route for making things happen and have an influence on the work system. So again, what is my core mission? It is to research, observe, and understand the complexity of relationships among government, organizations, and the community and how my intervention can open up new methods of working collaboratively and actualize innovative ideas into real projects.

My first garden workshop at Summit Community Garden lead by Michael who strives for the growth of community gardens and a larger network of a compost system. His website on Earth Appliance Organics has more information on what they do!

It is so exciting to see my garden table being filled up! I am still trying really hard to visit all of them before the fellowship ends. It is a huge delight to see how each garden has individuality and uniqueness in how they operate.

Mapping Community Gardens in Providence – Jisu Yang, B.Arch, Architecture, 2021

As it has been two weeks since I started working with the Parks Department Botanical Center, I realized how there is a layer of complexity in the network of community gardens in Providence.

My original proposal for Maharam STEAM fellowship was to create a mobile app for immigrant families to have easier access to community gardens in Providence. After a couple of meetings with the community garden leaders, I had doubts about how effective this platform would be if not everyone is comfortable with using mobile phones. Instead, I wanted my project to be more collaborative and reflect what the community really needs.  Over the past two weeks, the project naturally evolved while taking the core of the mobile app proposal.

From the first week, my supervisor Lee Ann recommended the following four steps to pursue.

1. Understand the network of community gardens both owned and not owned by Parks
2. Have conversations with the farmers and understand their needs
3. Choose a neighborhood that I like and needs my help the most
4. Document all the research and interviews and prepare materials for publication of the newsletter

The images capture moments from Roger Williams Park Botanical Center. There are four greenhouses that is connected to the office. They provide educational programs for the young internships, organizes the tour, invites weddings, and take care of goats!

The biggest challenge of working on this project is to gain data from these community gardens. There is so much to learn about how they operate in Providence. However, this information was only obtainable by talking to people in person. Frustrated by the lack of data of the community gardens, I was inspired to create a collective map of community gardens and their stories.

Roger Williams Community Garden Plot, right next to the office of Botanical Center

During the first week, I often volunteered at the Roger William Park Community Garden. From 8am to 11am, I helped with planting and weeding. I had a chance to have a conversation with Pasquale, who is a director and organizer of the garden. We had a great conversation and he recommended me to visit City Farm in Southside Community Land Trust and the community garden in Florence St. He said that his experience of working in this field changed his mind to focus from himself to “us”. The culture is shared through food plants and seeds. Some immigrant families bring their seeds from home and plant on their new home in The States. He also recommended me to visit a farmers market in Cranston armory since it has the largest congestions of farmers and I would be able to find people who have interesting story and perspective from the different cultural background.

Meeting Pasquale was a great reminder for me to reflect on the purpose of this fellowship. Although I am a foreigner to Providence, I am interested in community gardens because people who are from the States and who are from other places like me mingle in the community garden, starting to build a network of relationships. I am very interested in the process of how they work as a collective entity and the individual stories of urban farmers.

Community gardens from the Parks Department have multiple scales of operation in the context of Providence. Roger Williams Community Garden runs solely from a volunteer system and they produce vegetables that are donated to kitchens and social organizations such as Amos house, Providence Rescue Mission, and St. Vincent De Paul Society, supporting people who are often marginalized by the society. Other community gardens that are smaller scale are distributed throughout Rhode Island and it is provided for families or individuals who harvest crops for themselves.

South Side Community Land Trust is a social organization that supports and educates people from various cultural backgrounds to become urban farmers and be engaged in a larger network of community. They began as a group of people who were frustrated by the lack of gardens and started one on Somerset St. City Farm is a model of gardening for beginner farmers to understand how children’s education, marketing, and sustainable agriculture work. They also sponsor urban farmers to join the farmer’s market by providing space and furniture.

Diagram for the System of Community Gardens from The Parks and SCLT (the drawing is created by the author and it is based on interviewing and meeting with the administrators)

I had a chance to visit the market in Knight Memorial Library that happens every Wednesday from 2PM to 6PM. Surprisingly, all the stalls were from farmers who work with Southside Community Land Trust. Cilantro, lemongrass, sticky corn, pumpkin leaf, amaranth…etc; I really enjoyed how fresh and unique the vegetables they sell. Some of them are very specific to their home country and these vegetables cannot be found in any other supermarket!

Farmer’s Market in Knight Memorial Library opens every week from 2pm to 6pm

At the end of the second week of my fellowship, I gathered all the information from the meeting and visiting community gardens. I realized that there is not any database for collecting individual stories from community gardens. Yet, I believe this is a very important aspect because it helps bring more attention from the public on the larger mission of promoting urban agriculture in Providence. From the meeting with garden leaders of Summit Neighbor Community Garden, it was interesting to hear how they wanted to grow their gardens by providing more educational workshops and they were very curious about how other community gardens expand their educational model. As the community garden in Providence has been growing exponentially since 2003, it is really important to understand the larger network of community gardens and how the information and opportunities can be more accessible to the public.

This map is from the article Edible Providence: Integrating Local Food into Urban Planning. Please check it out since it contains very holistic research of urban agriculture and case studies of organizational movements that attempt to make Providence more Edible! 

For the next couple weeks, I will continue to have more meetings with different community garden leaders and try to create a Story Map that visually maps where the gardens are and provide a new layer of narrative and educational events in individual plots.

My supervisor was very excited to hear my project idea and she said that the story map project was something they have wanted to do it before. She shared the Parks ArcGIS platform that I will be using to continue making a story map and this will have direct access from the Parks Department website. Although this is a very beginning stage, eventually this page will have pin-points for all the community gardens in Providence and storyboard of individual plots.

One challenge I have is to listen from the perspectives of farmers who are immigrant families. Although I had a really good time talking to farmers from Farmer’s market, some people were not very open to talking with me when I asked about their personal stories and cultural background. I hope as my fellowship proceeds, I could have a better understanding of the different perspectives from the government, social organizations, and local farmers.

This table is the most updated collection of community gardens from the Parks. I acknowledge that there are still more out there that I am not aware of. I am very excited to discover and visit more community gardens and see my garden bingo table fill-out more!