Community Gardens as Thirdspace: Informal Learning and the Performance of Everyday Practices in Multicultural Spaces

• In Event: The Many Spaces of Gardens

Abstract

For environmental and adult educators, community gardens are pedagogical sites that foster multiple types of informal learning, both individual and collective. This interpretive case study brings together the concept of Thirdspace, “multiculturalism from below” and informal adult learning (aka “free choice learning”) to investigate how immigrant gardeners make sense of their experience in an urban community garden, as they are “transplanted” from their old home cultural spaces to a new home cultural space. Research findings detail how immigrant gardeners are motivated to become involved in community gardens; the knowledge they share with others in the cultivation, care, harvest and consumption of plants; and what and how they learn from their involvement in community gardens.

Authors

• Pierre Walter, University of British Columbia

• Hongxia Shan, OISE/University of Toronto

• Gabriella Maestrini, University of British Columbia