Community Based Garden Design - Workshop

2011 Summer Institute for Sustainable Communities presents:
Community-Based Garden Design: Civic Engagement and Public Space
July 22-24, 2011
Flagstaff, Arizona

Location: Killip Elementary School; Flagstaff, AZ

Workshop Summary: Communities throughout the world are restoring environmentally and socially sustainable food systems. These initiatives not only increase access to healthy, culturally relevant foods but provide a platform where grassroots community organizing, civic engagement, and shared values can grow.

Drawing from examples of community-based food projects around the world, we will design a garden that elevates the land-based knowledge of the Flagstaff community. While the end result will be a garden, much of the class will focus on developing and reinforcing relationships between organizations, youth, and elders in the Sunnyside Neighborhood.

Topics include:
· Community control of knowledge
· Identifying needs a garden can address
· Importance of intergenerational and intercultural dialogue
· Facilitating your own community-based garden design process
· Fundamentals of urban garden design.
· Sunnyside Neighborhood history and current issues

*This 3-day workshop is focused on the design process, NOT the completion of a garden. However, the design we create will be installed at Northland Family Help Center's new youth center in Sunnyside immediately following the workshop.

Who Should Participate?
The workshop is open to anyone interested in working to create a shared vision for a healthy community - including but not limited to artists, youth, elders, teachers, farmers, community organizations, neighborhood associations, and students.

Who is Facilitating the Workshop?
The workshop will be facilitated by Brett Ramey (see biography below), representatives from Northland Family Help Center, and the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities at Northern Arizona University.

Additional Support provided by: Flagstaff Foodlink; Hermosa Vida; Killip Elementary School; Native Americans for Community Action (NACA); Sunnyside Neighborhood Association;

Schedule:
Friday July 22; 6-9 pm
Saturday July 23; 9-5pm
Sunday July 24; 9-5 pm

Cost: $125 Workshop Registration OR available for 1 graduate credit (pass/fail) to NAU students (SUS 697 Independent Study: Community-Based Garden Design)
*Some Full and Partial non-credit scholarships are available

For more information OR to Register:
Tamara Ramirez at (928) 523-0499 or Tamara.Ramirez@nau.edu. or
Jo Hale at joannahale@gmail.com
NAU graduate students who wish to take the workshops for credit may register online at https://my.nau.edu

* Registration is limited to 15 participants and must be received by Monday July 18th, 2011

Facilitator’s Biography:
For over a decade Brett Ramey has worked with young people around the world to reconnect to land-based knowledge while living in urban areas. He was the founding Director of the Urban Lifeways Project within Native Movement, a Flagstaff-based organization that supported Indigenous youth leadership development and sustainability programs. Brett recently moved home to the Ioway reservation near White Cloud, Kansas where he is a Community Health Worker with the Center for American Indian Community Health. Their work includes addressing health disparities in Native communities in Northeast Kansas through traditional food, youth, smoking cessation, and cancer prevention projects.