Hosted by Borderlands Co-operative & St John’s Church
The newly formed Footscray Community Garden & Learning Place has now had two General Meetings, with the first including 35 people who contributed a wide range of ideas and suggestions for the Garden.
Included here is a link to the agreed upon Guidelines for the Footscray Community Garden & Learning Place.
The two hosting organisations (Borderlands & St John’s) have taken on responsibility for liaising with various cultural community organisations, neighbourhood houses, advocacy groups and local schools. Community groups will be provided with ongoing opportunities to be involved with the Garden, both in a participatory and learning context, and in terms of the use and/or distribution of produce in the future.
As discussed at our first General Meeting, the core objectives of the Garden include:
- Encouraging purposeful community connections through small-scale food production;
- Enabling locals to share and develop skills across intercultural and intergenerational communities aimed at building food security, lifelong learning and a bank of community knowledge in equitable, sustainable living practices;
- Building on collective resilience and wellbeing by connecting locals to community networks.
The Garden is supported by a community development perspective and infrastructure, through the work of Borderlands Co-operative. We hope the Garden will provide one of the venues for next year’s Victorian community development conference, for which Borderlands is currently in the process of establishing an organising committee. This follows a very successful community development meeting at Borderlands in May, with community development practitioners and academics from throughout Melbourne and Geelong.
In the next two weeks Borderlands will be meeting with a range of community organisations to feed in further ideas and future possibilities. This will be coordinated by the Borderlands Co-ordinator, Jorge Jorquera. St John’s is also having conversations with its community.
On Sunday July 21, David Jones and Clive organised the soil testing (see pic). We will have results back in the next couple of weeks. This will help us make decisions about the Garden design and some timelines. Permaculture Out West is also keen to organise a learning workshop that could feed in further ideas.
Final decisions about the initial Garden design will be made at the next General Meeting. This meeting will also decide on the membership for a Management Committee, and working-bees for August and September. Of course, moving forward changes can always be made to the design and management of the Garden, based on General Meeting decisions and in collaboration with the hosting organisations, Borderlands Co-operative and St John’s Church.
The next General Meeting of the Footscray Community Garden & Learning Place will be held on either Friday August 16 or Saturday August 17. Please use this poll to indicate a preference. The form also includes an option to nominate for the Management Committee.
If you have time during the week to be involved and help out, please contact Jorge Jorquera on jorge@borderlands.org.auor 0416 200 922.
Looking forward to our August Meeting!