Gardening for Social Ills

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Grounding the "Natural" Boundaries of Curriculum

Abstract

Using data from an ongoing community garden project, the purpose of this presentation is to elucidate my autoethnographic and analytic accounts of ideating, creating and using school and community gardens in Montreal, Quebec. With local partners, I have co-created gardens on a university campus, at an underfunded public school, and at two different community organizations that work with youth experiencing homelessness and housing precarity. In this paper, I discuss how gardens can address social ills and social and environmental injustice. While there are many social ills, in this presentation I first present some of my insights on the current state of gardening and social justice in Montreal, before discussing consumerism, gentrification, and neoliberalism in relation to school and community gardens.

Author

• Mitchell McLarnon, McGill University