BUILDING A COMMUNITY BASED RESEARCH NETWORK
We seek to advance the understanding of foodways (local food cultures) and foodscapes (our relationships to the spaces and places in our communities that shape health and food access).
Co/LAB supports food system change work through research. We focus on what community-based researchers and community organizers can accomplish together. Since 2011, Co/LAB has been working with community partners to innovate new ways of creating a healthy food future through collaborations. Today we work with several partners to identify overlapping research interests and organizing needs.
PEOPLE’S PRODUCE PROJECT
Keryna Johnson and Diane Moss (PPP Director)
With the People’s Produce Project, we are using ethnography, video narratives and photoVoice to support the “Good Food Legacies” Community Mobilization Campaign in Southeast San Diego. By learning more about the powerful multicultural history of growers and eaters throughout the county, we can illustrate the various relations of interconnectedness that our communities possess to rebuild a strong food system. We also are building an online interactive map tool so that community members can connect their stories to data and other important information that can strengthen our collective efforts to bring about food system change. See the “Good Food Legacies” video narrative.
SAN DIEGO COMMUNITY GARDEN NETWORK
The San Diego Community Garden Network is working with Co/LAB to create storymaps that connect local San Diegans with a longterm and yet unfolding history of their experiences with community gardens. As a master gardener and retired nurse, Judy Jacoby, founder and director of SDCGN, is especially passionate about building community to improve public health and wellbeing, more broadly. As a co-researcher, she invites folks to understand their neighborhoods more deeply by chronicling the process of building and sustaining gardens. (See the San Diego Community Garden Network map.) If you wish to contribute to the SDCGN Garden Stories Project, write to: plantsandiego@gmail.com.