HEALTH AND LOCAL FOOD:
We invite your participation!
Uprooted the documentary is calling for input and thoughts from the wider community about the connections between our personal health and the health of our communities, economy, and environment. We want you to take a look at the two clips below that explore the connection between personal and environmental health and post a comment letting us know your perspectives.
We also invite you to submit written work in the form of poetry, spoken word, prose, or art and we will select winners to be in the documentary, speaking his/her stories, spoken word, or perspectives. You will also get a green screen shoot, and archival footage for your web page, myspace, blog or whatever.
Here's the idea. We are looking for pieces that include these themes:
connections between poor health and lack of healthy foods in many urban neighborhoods, how people can empower themselves by growing their own food or seeking food from local sources, and the connection between personal health and the health of our environment.
Here are the rough cuts of what we have now. We suggest that you watch the clips below and then add your personal experiences, stories, and perspectives to what we've started with. Submit written work in the blog or you can e-mail work to t brad@gotthenac.org or tom.kondilas@lessproductions.com
UPROOTED- HEALTH PART I
UPROOTED- HEALTH PART II
Food and Health in the City
How can we build a nutritional structure in our urban food deserts?
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Call for Submissions! (background)
Uprooted, the documentary that this blog is about, needs written word transitions. OK, let's back it up a second, ideally this blog would serve as the background for the movie, but we're kind of getting everything going at once here.
In 2006, the New Agrarian Center (NAC) and LESS Productions teamed up to make a series of web videos about a number of the NAC's programs and projects. The web videos became more and more connected and ambitious until LESS finally recut the project into one documentary, The Real Low Calorie Diet (TRLCD). It really changed how we looked at the entire project.
TRLCD was about a local food movement, grassroots, activism, the environment, our health, education, urban decay, the economy - you name it. And it had an impact on the people involved with and surrounded by the project.
TRLCD has played at film festivals including The Friends of the Earth Film Series in Honolulu, Hawaii and was a made it to the final round of judging for ITVS.
Uprooted is our second collaboration. Specifically addressing the connection between humans and what they eat, we hope this documentary helps show how easy it is to contribute to change with something as simple as food.
We've been posting rough clips online to show additional funders, enthusiasts and to help promote the movie. We believe that our medium is inherently collaborative and would love to include more artists, disciplines and creativity to Uprooted by including others. Not to mention that a major aspect of this movie and what its about is "community." And we feel that this should not exclude the arts community. So please, check out the submission call, make a comment and tell people about the movie - I mean, we're all in this thing together anyway.
In 2006, the New Agrarian Center (NAC) and LESS Productions teamed up to make a series of web videos about a number of the NAC's programs and projects. The web videos became more and more connected and ambitious until LESS finally recut the project into one documentary, The Real Low Calorie Diet (TRLCD). It really changed how we looked at the entire project.
TRLCD was about a local food movement, grassroots, activism, the environment, our health, education, urban decay, the economy - you name it. And it had an impact on the people involved with and surrounded by the project.
TRLCD has played at film festivals including The Friends of the Earth Film Series in Honolulu, Hawaii and was a made it to the final round of judging for ITVS.
Uprooted is our second collaboration. Specifically addressing the connection between humans and what they eat, we hope this documentary helps show how easy it is to contribute to change with something as simple as food.
We've been posting rough clips online to show additional funders, enthusiasts and to help promote the movie. We believe that our medium is inherently collaborative and would love to include more artists, disciplines and creativity to Uprooted by including others. Not to mention that a major aspect of this movie and what its about is "community." And we feel that this should not exclude the arts community. So please, check out the submission call, make a comment and tell people about the movie - I mean, we're all in this thing together anyway.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Innovation
At last check, everybody eats, right? So food is one of the few items for which there is a guarenteed market. As we work to grow sustainable local food systems, we find a lot of opportunities for innovation, from youth growing food on vacant lots to family farmers growing food for Fresh Stops or farmers markets in urban neighborhood that have lost grocery stores.
Think about Steven Jobs fiddling around with circuit boards in his garage and how that led to Apple Computer. Most good innovations start with small-scale tinkering in backyards, garages, or neighborhoods. From the city to the country, people are innovating a many small ways to contribute to a more sustainable local food system. Local foods can be grown anywhere and any time. This is a rough cut of some interviews with some of the leading thinkers and doers along the southern reaches of Lake Erie as they look at the many opportunities for innovation in the local food system.
UPROOTED- INNOVATION PART I
UPROOTED- INNOVATION PART II
Interview compilation features Professors Ned Hill and Norm Krumholz from Cleveland State University's Levin School for Urban Affairs, Brad Masi from the New Agrarian Center, Maurice Small from City Fresh, and Punam Ohri-Vaspachi from Ohio State University Cooperative Extension.
What innovative ideas can you add of your own?
Think about Steven Jobs fiddling around with circuit boards in his garage and how that led to Apple Computer. Most good innovations start with small-scale tinkering in backyards, garages, or neighborhoods. From the city to the country, people are innovating a many small ways to contribute to a more sustainable local food system. Local foods can be grown anywhere and any time. This is a rough cut of some interviews with some of the leading thinkers and doers along the southern reaches of Lake Erie as they look at the many opportunities for innovation in the local food system.
UPROOTED- INNOVATION PART I
UPROOTED- INNOVATION PART II
Interview compilation features Professors Ned Hill and Norm Krumholz from Cleveland State University's Levin School for Urban Affairs, Brad Masi from the New Agrarian Center, Maurice Small from City Fresh, and Punam Ohri-Vaspachi from Ohio State University Cooperative Extension.
What innovative ideas can you add of your own?
Thursday, February 21, 2008
TREATMENT for Uprooted
"…major threats to the planet such as climate change, the rate of extinction of species, and the challenge of feeding a growing population are among the many that remain unresolved, and all of them put humanity at risk."
—From an October 25, 2007 UN Environmental Programme report, later described as a "wake up call" to the world about how we currently use our resources to sustain ourselves.
"No copper" is spray painted on the boards nailed over the empty windows of a dilapidated house to deter vandals from breaking in to steal pipes and scrap metal – a typical inner-city Cleveland rustbelt scene. Miles away from any grocery stores and inundated with fast food, nicotine and alcohol, these communities – called food-deserts – have no access to fresh, healthy food.
A few blocks away in an otherwise lifeless mix of concrete, brick and metal, urban farmers work to grow change. By taking an empty parking lot, building raised beds and cultivating a rich layer of soil with mulch and organic compost, they grow fresh produce available for sale in this otherwise forgotten, food-desert community.
Throughout the Midwest, abandoned fields are overrun with rotting soybeans and inedible corn atop soil saturated with pesticides and depleted of essential nutrients for farming. Millions of useless acres left by an agri-business food system exhibit the result of unsustainable practices.
Down the road at the George Jones farm, students, community members and environmentalists are elbow-deep in fertile soil producing organically grown okra, peppers, watermelon and squash to feed the Oberlin community and college students.
Uprooted: Reconnecting Food and People uses these scenes of our food system's crumbling infrastructure and butts them against the green initiatives and active steps people across the US are taking to resurrect a sustainable system.
In-depth interviews with renowned academics such as David Orr (The 11th Hour, Oberlin College Environmental Studies chair), poet David Young (Pushcart Prize, U.S. Award of the International Poetry Forum, Guggenheim Fellow) and 13-year Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (senior-most woman in Congress) show the progressive steps our leaders are currently taking for betterment.
Commentary from everyday farmers, chefs, college students and even Michael Pollan (New York Times Bestseller Omnivore's Dilemma) add to the overwhelming evidence that everyday people do have a chance to improve their environment by making better decisions with what they eat.
Comprehensive, dynamic, and timely, Uprooted shows the ways that the whole of society can push for positive change in an environment that needs it. After all, everybody eats.
—From an October 25, 2007 UN Environmental Programme report, later described as a "wake up call" to the world about how we currently use our resources to sustain ourselves.
"No copper" is spray painted on the boards nailed over the empty windows of a dilapidated house to deter vandals from breaking in to steal pipes and scrap metal – a typical inner-city Cleveland rustbelt scene. Miles away from any grocery stores and inundated with fast food, nicotine and alcohol, these communities – called food-deserts – have no access to fresh, healthy food.
A few blocks away in an otherwise lifeless mix of concrete, brick and metal, urban farmers work to grow change. By taking an empty parking lot, building raised beds and cultivating a rich layer of soil with mulch and organic compost, they grow fresh produce available for sale in this otherwise forgotten, food-desert community.
Throughout the Midwest, abandoned fields are overrun with rotting soybeans and inedible corn atop soil saturated with pesticides and depleted of essential nutrients for farming. Millions of useless acres left by an agri-business food system exhibit the result of unsustainable practices.
Down the road at the George Jones farm, students, community members and environmentalists are elbow-deep in fertile soil producing organically grown okra, peppers, watermelon and squash to feed the Oberlin community and college students.
Uprooted: Reconnecting Food and People uses these scenes of our food system's crumbling infrastructure and butts them against the green initiatives and active steps people across the US are taking to resurrect a sustainable system.
In-depth interviews with renowned academics such as David Orr (The 11th Hour, Oberlin College Environmental Studies chair), poet David Young (Pushcart Prize, U.S. Award of the International Poetry Forum, Guggenheim Fellow) and 13-year Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (senior-most woman in Congress) show the progressive steps our leaders are currently taking for betterment.
Commentary from everyday farmers, chefs, college students and even Michael Pollan (New York Times Bestseller Omnivore's Dilemma) add to the overwhelming evidence that everyday people do have a chance to improve their environment by making better decisions with what they eat.
Comprehensive, dynamic, and timely, Uprooted shows the ways that the whole of society can push for positive change in an environment that needs it. After all, everybody eats.
Hungry for More?
This affects you, guaranteed. So pay attention and check us out often. After all, everybody eats.
http://www.myspace.com/UprootedMovie
http://www.youtube.com/UprootedMovie
http://media.gotthenac.org
http://www.myspace.com/UprootedMovie
http://www.youtube.com/UprootedMovie
http://media.gotthenac.org
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