Education

Forest Food Gardens: Communities, Ecologies and Collaboration

Module code: X5701E
Level 5
15 credits in spring semester
Teaching method: Seminar
Assessment modes: Presentation, Project

On this module, you’ll collaborate on group activities for the campus forest food garden. You’ll garden, design parts of the planting and garden infrastructure, and implement plans. This includes water solutions, mushroom cultivation and ground cover planning.

You’ll connect these tasks of food growing and questions of land use, to wider political themes. Through this, you’ll work imagine alternative futures and think about how small actions contribute to bigger change.

You’ll also examine:

• the messy, complex realities of working in food systems
• climate change and biodiversity loss
• how to engage wider groups in sustainability issues, using creative and practical approaches.

You’ll finish with the knowledge and real-world experience of supporting local communities and the wider world for the better.

Module learning outcomes

• Demonstrate an understanding of political factors relevant to the creation of a forest food garden.
• Reflect analytically on the possibilities and challenges of working collaboratively to address a sustainability-related issue.
• Design a teaching resource that engages other students in the complexity and uncertainty of sustainability issues, making effective use of digital and/or creative media.