Memories of 'Mr Seel's Garden': Engaging with historic and future food systems in Liverpool

在利物浦一号的外缘，在市中心42英亩的再生区，有一家乐购超市。这本身并不引人注目--你在利物浦走得很远，就会遇到一个--然而，如果你冒险走到正门的角落，你会发现一组牌匾，复制了该地区18世纪的地图。描述中写道，这片区域曾经是西尔先生的花园。这幅画将当代观众带入了一段失落的过去，描述中写道：“你正站在一个用星号表示的花园上。”然而，你并不是所有矗立在花园上的人，因为乐购本身也直接位于花园的顶部。然而，尽管你可能会觉得自己有点怀旧--想象着一位好心的西尔先生递给你一颗刚切好的卷心菜--但他的描述让你知道，“托马斯·西尔是18世纪的商人。他从可怕的奴隶贸易中赚钱，但用其中的一部分来支付利物浦第一家医务室的费用。”这张地图将当前和历史上的食物系统不可思议地并列在一起，这一点得到了许多利物浦当地食物活动家的评论。它所产生的生动体验将多种元素--食物、地图、历史、时间、权力、残忍、记忆、交织在一起的当地和全球社区--聚集在一起，描绘了一幅复杂的图景，描绘了社区不断变化的性质以及将它们连接在一起的系统。我们的试点示范项目旨在通过在时间、食物和社区参与方面具有共同兴趣的广泛合作伙伴之间的合作，参与到“Seel先生的花园”中编织的富有成效的结和纠结中。该项目将与利物浦羽翼未丰的当地食品运动中的社区组织合作，探索如何让当地社区参与不断变化的食品生产模式，以帮助利物浦当前的基层努力，提高对当前食品问题的认识。简要描述该项目的细节：志愿者和学术研究人员将结合研究方法--口述历史、档案研究和遗址识别/文献--建立一幅多层次的图景，了解利物浦不断变化的食品系统的性质。从这些活动中收集的数据将在项目网页上提供给更广泛的社区，并将提供给一个创造性的团队，该团队将为支持GPS的智能手机开发本地媒体应用程序，以及印刷媒体历史悠久的当地美食徒步旅行。这些产出将有助于传播研究工作的结果，同时也提高对当地粮食问题和项目合作伙伴本身的认识。整个过程本身将提供材料，以支持对社会对时间和社区的理解之间的相互联系的哲学研究，对使社区与历史环境接触的方法的考古研究，以及对档案利用的实用和情感方面的研究。在其方法和总体方法方面，该项目通过展示通过对社区确定的兴趣和挑战制定实用的、创造性的和理论的回应，对一些艺术和人文学科做出重大研究贡献的可能性，为互联社区计划做出贡献。在这样做的过程中，它将通过利用比较和历史方法来探讨社区如何随着时间的推移而变化，以及历史研究过程本身如何影响社区对当前挑战的反应，从而解决方案的核心研究问题。

On the outer edges of Liverpool ONE, a 42 acre regeneration area of the city centre, there is a Tesco Superstore. This is unremarkable in itself - you can't go very far in Liverpool without running into one - however, if you venture just around the corner of the main entrance you'll find a set of plaques that reproduce an 18th Century map of the area. The description states that this area was once 'Mr Seel's Garden'. Drawing the contemporary viewer into a lost past, the description states: "you are standing on what was the garden, represented by an asterisk". You are not all that stands on what was the garden, however, as the Tesco itself is also directly on top of the garden site. Yet, even while you might catch yourself becoming a little nostalgic - imagining a kindly Mr Seel handing you a freshly cut cabbage - the description lets you know that "Thomas Seel was an eighteenth century merchant. He made money out of the dreadful slave trade, but used some of it to pay for Liverpool's first infirmary". The uncanny juxtaposition of current and historic food systems, made visible by this map, has been commented on by a number of Liverpool local food activists. The vivid experience it produces, draws together multiple elements - food, maps, history, time, power, cruelty, memory, intertwined local and global communities - to paint a complex picture of the changing nature of communities and the systems that connect them together. Our pilot demonstrator project aims to engage with the productive knots and tangles woven together by 'Mr Seel's Garden' through a collaboration between a broad range of partners with a shared interest in time, food and community engagement. Working with community organisations within Liverpool's fledgling local food movement, this project will explore how engaging local communities with the changing patterns of food production could contribute to current grassroots efforts within Liverpool to raise awareness around current food issues.To describe the specifics of the project in brief: volunteer and academic researchers will use a combination of research methodologies - oral history, archive research and site identification/documentation - to build up a multi-layered picture of the changing nature of food systems in Liverpool. The data gathered from each of these activities will be made available to wider community on a project web page, and will feed into a creative strand that will develop a locative media application for GPS enabled smartphones, as well as a print media historic local food walking tour. These outputs will help to disseminate the results of the research work, while also raising awareness of local food issues and the project partners themselves. The overall process itself will provide material to support philosophical research into the interconnections between social understandings of time and community, archaeological research into methods of engaging communities with the historical environment and research into the pragmatic and affective aspects of archive use.In its methods and overall approach, the project contributes to the Connected Communities programme by demonstrating the possibilities of making significant research contributions to a number of arts and humanities disciplines through the development of practical, creative and theoretical responses to community identified interests and challenges. In so doing it will address the core research concerns of the Programme by utilising comparative and historical methods to explore both how communities change over time, and how the process of historical research can itself impact on community responses to current challenges.