CSC300 Service Learning: Second Meeting

The second meeting was on Wednesday 2pm, March 9. The attendants were Andrew, Mariyam, Sara and I. Prior to the meeting, I had a chance to read part of Sara's paper about the Global Roots Project. She also gave us a few links to the websites that record stories told about specific geographic locations. One similar project is known as the "murmur" project. People listen to the stories and get to know the histories and ancedotes of the local people. The "murmur" project unveiled the private truths and tales that make up the city. Information hidden from eyes and things being forgotten by the new generation are picked up and translated into the form of voices. I think this is something that people nowadays don't usually find in someone's blog or social networking spaces. Hence I'm provided a great opportunity to help improve the situation.

Our objective again is to help Sara with the project The Global Roots Project and get the audio recordings of the gardeners' narratives displayed within the garden and on the internet. More precisely, the Global Roots garden we provide services for is one of the two locations in Toronto that the Stop Community Food Center operates. People from different ethnic communities are given a 20-by-13 ft plot to grow non-local vegetables. There are different events going on each week for them to socialize. The design of the garden and the diversity of the plants tell the story of how people share their cultures. Inspired by the "murmur" project, the Global Roots Project will also record the stories of all the gardeners in all languages. The stories told in other languages other than English will be translated. Although it's suggested to listen to the story throughout the garden, we still need to build a website for the larger public.

During the meeting we discussed the rough idea of the website we are going to build. Andrew and I will be responsible for it. We consider to put a image of the garden with plots. Stories are wrapped in a tag or label or button scattered throughout the image like a geographic location in a map. By clicking the the tag/label/button, people get access to the audio files of the stories.
We still need to design the different level of the website. We also considered the possibilities to have interactive feature such as providing comments or feedback. However, such interaction may require a database in the back-end to store all the information sent by users and add more
complexity to the project.

CSC300 2011 Winter Service Learning, First Meeting

Today Andrew, Mariyam and I met with our service partner, Sara, at Noir Cafe near The Stop Community Food Center. She briefly introduced The Global Root Project to us and brought us to the Stop Green Barn, located at St. Clair and Christie.

Our main duties associated with this project include building a website that host the oral histories of the gardeners in the neighborhood and creating the audio installation within the garden. The primary goal is to allow people in the community to get more familiar with the history and background of the local green food and urban agriculture. People may hear about the concept but they seldom have the chances to directly access to the stories behind the scenes. People get the source of information directly through listening to a short storytelling audio clip, which is more reliable.

The gardeners being interviewed by our service partner Sara come from all over the world such as Canada, India, China, Kenia, and etc. Most of them is able to speak English. People with different cultural background share their knowledge of food, gardening here.