GEM (Grown, Edible, Meaningful): Herbal Probes for Community-Driven Environmental Change

该提案旨在制定和评估一种方法，以收集不同信仰社区关于文化、环境价值观和饮食传统的陈述。该工具建立在文化探索的概念之上，可用于研究人们的生活方式选择和价值观，并创新地将其用作社区成员之间分享学习的手段，而不是纯粹地反馈给设计师/研究人员。该项目利用社区种植的食物作为探索活动，通过参与者嵌入，表达和分享文化价值观和可持续生活选择，借鉴社区种植项目的成功，将人们彼此联系起来，参与者将通过社区和信仰团体邀请选择和种植可食用植物作为“草药探针”，以激发讨论起源，分享，可持续性和文化在一个小组的背景下。利兹两个文化多样的城市地区的居民将在一个启动车间准备回收容器，然后种植和培育一种对他们具有象征意义的可食用植物的种子，从而开始生长季节。到了收获季节，他们团聚在一起，分享植物对他们的意义和故事，从而也让人们了解价值观和生活选择。多余的草药和蔬菜可以交换。这个过程将以一种与日常生活相结合的方式发展环境友好型生活的各个方面，同时激发反思，同时引发反映不同社区、文化和信仰对环境生活的不同态度的叙述。将对叙述进行分析，以告知项目的两个方面-与人们如何看待环境信息有关的食物的不同传统是什么？在家庭生活中草药探针的存在如何影响人们对环境可持续实践的兴趣和参与？

The proposal seeks to develop and assess a way to gather accounts from different faith communities about culture, environmental values and food traditions. The tool builds on the concept of cultural probes, which can be used to research people's lifestyle choices and values, and, innovatively, using them as a means to share learning between community members rather than purely feeding back to designer/researchers. The project uses communally grown food as the probe activity through which participants embed, articulate and share cultural values and sustainable life choices, drawing on the success of community growing projects to connect people with each other, with their environment and with issues of sustainable and healthy living.Participants will be invited through community and faith groups to choose and grow edible plants as 'herbal probes' to inspire discussion about provenance, sharing, sustainability and culture in a group context. Residents in two distinct culturally-diverse urban areas of Leeds will start the growing season by preparing recycled containers at a launch workshop, then planting and nurturing a seed for an edible plant chosen to have symbolic meaning to them. By harvest time, they reunite to share the produce and stories of what the plants represent to them, thereby also giving insight into values and life choices. Excess herbs and vegetables can be swapped. The process will develop aspects of environmentally-friendly living in a way that integrates with ordinary life yet inspires reflection, while eliciting accounts that reveal different attitudes to environmental living across communities, cultures and faiths.Accounts will be analyzed to inform on two aspects of the project - what are the different traditions with food that relate to how people regard environmental messages? And how does the presence of a herbal probe in the life of a household impact on interest and engagement in environmentally sustainable practices?