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Urban farming next up for NVA

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

June 9, 2010 | 3 min read

Creative arts organisation, NVA is launching its next mass action strategy and public artwork, putting food production at the heart of city living.

SAGE (Sow and Grow Everywhere) & Glasgow Harvest aim to stimulate change in the way people think about what they eat.

A celebration of Urban Farming, SAGE is an initiative which aims to generate a significant change in community food growing in the Glasgow Metropolitan region. A joint venture by NVA and ERZ landscape architects, SAGE is transforming derelict and vacant land into vibrant, stimulating, visually attractive spaces for people to grow their own food.

It has been designed as a mobile initiative – when land is required for development, the infrastructure can move to a new site.

SAGE is encouraging local groups to raise funds themselves and transform derelict and vacant land where they can grow their own food and herbs to both provide for their families and friends, and potentially offer surplus to a wider area. It is complementing and extending the existing network of community food initiatives.

SAGE also offers the potential for larger initiatives to be developed into vibrant social enterprises.

Central to SAGE is the “growing toolkit”, which includes direction to public funding sources and a high quality, durable, specially designed “modular system” of grow boxes/bags made from recycled materials.

The first of these modular systems are currently being installed at demonstration sites across Glasgow, in readiness for the 2010/11 growing season.

Angus Farquhar, Creative Director of NVA says “SAGE (Sow and Grow Everywhere) is the simple acronym for what we hope will be a significant contribution to helping people to grow their own food in a city environment. Greater Glasgow has plenty of vacant and underused land and huge waiting lists for allotments. The approach of NVA and ERZ demonstrates an innovative and visually striking set of solutions that can be picked up and replicated across the region.”

Glasgow Harvest is set to take place on Saturday 28th August at the Hidden Gardens; it is an invitation to everyone in the city who grows their own food, whether on a windowsill or in an allotment, to share a huge open air meal prepared with their own produce. Glasgow Harvest will also present new artworks and commissions developed around the themes and politics of food production.

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