Cultivating a library for citizen engagement

Purpose: Food Sharing Initiatives (FSIs) have the potential to make urban and peri-urban food systems more circular, shared and resilient through collective actions across the food system – from growing and harvesting, to cooking and eating, to composting and food waste prevention. While food sharing itself can be a novel method for engaging citizens in transforming urban and peri-urban foodscapes, FSIs can also struggle to engage those most impacted by the injustices of our current food system. In response we have developed a library of citizen engagement (as part of the Horizon Europe CULTIVATE project https://cultivate-project.eu/ ) to support FSIs, as well as policy makers and citizens in realizing more equitable and inclusive forms of social innovation. The library is an open access collection of engagement mechanisms, including several bespoke serious games we have co-designed in Utrecht. In this workshop we will test out the library and some of its tools. Learning Objectives: the objective of this workshop is to test and refine the CULTIVATE library of citizen engagement. Participants will learn about food sharing as well as citizen engagement mechanisms that are relevant to food sharing initiatives. Materials: We will bring our own materials. We do require 5 large tables and a projector or screen. Audience: anyone who is interested in food sharing and/or citizen engagement. No prior knowledge needed. We will also recruit food sharing initiatives, creatives, and policy makers from our networks.