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

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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?