This document discusses a study analyzing urban agriculture and food activism in Bristol, England during its designation as the European Green Capital in 2015. It finds that while grassroots food networks used urban agriculture to express citizenship, they had limited success influencing institutional change. The study analyzed social media related to a community farm, local media coverage, and interviews. It found the food movement in Bristol was ignored by mainstream media. While activists were proud of their local efforts, they were frustrated that larger changes were difficult due to limited resources and policy constraints. The researchers question how effective the city's Food Policy Council structure was at incorporating grassroots perspectives.

1. New democratic
governance?
Or a divide between policy
and practice in urban
agriculture?
Critical Foodscapes
conference
Warwick University 7th July 2016
Matt Reed & Dan Keech, CCRI,
University of Gloucestershire
@CCRI_UK
Pic:BBCNewswebsitePic:IncredibleEdibleBristol

2. Outline
• Introduction - Food networks and Bristol Green Capital 2015: grassroots
and institutional change around food.
• Literature – Urban agriculture and social media create spaces for
citizenship. Does the concept of the commons help?
• Methods – media analysis, social network of a twitter feed, case study
interviews, green capital documents: meso-level analysis.
• Discussion of some findings – themes emerging in Bristol; the visibility
of food activism in BGC 2015; hierarchy of city projects.
• Conclusions – Lack of engagement ‘out there’ with food in BGC;
grassroots food networks using UA as an expression of citizenship to
augment the state, rather than as a lever for institutional change.

3. Bristol, European Green
Capital 2015:
A history of contention
around food and the city
Gateway to the southwest
of England
Problems of poverty and
food access
City culture of
experimentation and arts

4. Literature
• We are interested in how local food, and particularly the grassroots urban food
movement in Bristol, is a framework for citizenship.
• Our work in Bristol included social media analysis linked to The Community Farm.
Much research on how urban agriculture shapes the fabric of the city. We wanted to
look at how urban agriculture and the internet create hybrid spaces, where
citizenship is performed (Castells 2012, Brunori and Di Iacovo 2014).
• We find it possible to re-think Morgan’s (2014:13) assertion that ‘While local food
campaigns in the UK are a dynamic urban force, nourishing the city in more ways
than one, they do not (as yet) possess the trans-local reach and organisational
coherence to constitute a new social movement.’
• By drawing inspiration from Bennett, Beck, Castells we do recognise urban food as a
social movement, but not one which is determined to change the food system, but
one which about exercising citizenship.

5. Urban agriculture and the commons?
• Urban sphere has been the space where ‘commoning’ is as important as a
reaction beyond the state and the market, not just about the stewardship
of fixed assets.
• Bollier suggests:
‘In order for the generativity of the commons to manifest itself, it needs the “open
spaces” for bottom-up initiatives to occur in interaction with the resources at hand.
In this way, citizenship and governance are blended and reconstituted. (Bollier &
Helfrich (eds.) 2012)
• Tornaghi (2014) suggests urban agriculture needs to be studied critically,
from a perspective less based on advocacy, and that some serious
questions need to be asked about the constraining role of health,
environment and planning policy in developing multi-functional urban ag.

6. Methods
• SUPURBFOOD – 1st Jan – 31st Dec 2013. 230 blogs, 16,000
tweets from 24 accounts and interviews, Nvivo analysis.
• Social network analysis from twitter during 2015, Polinode.
• Analysis of local media from 2015 (Bristol Green Capital +/– 4
months) using LexusNexus & Nvivo 10.
• Documentary analysis of Green Capital grant files.
• Support from Bristol Food Network.

7. Results: A. SUPURBfood interviews
• History of ‘getting on with it’:
"I think maybe there hasn't been the political leadership (historically). Certainly it
hasn't been very radical and interesting so people go and get on with it
themselves”.
• But key activists have also informed municipal development thanks
to having the ‘ear’ of council/last Mayor:
“I think there are areas of land which are owned by the local authority which they allow for
the use of growing. They tend to be pretty good at trying to help facilitate….”
• Duality of seeing most hope in the small-scale, and frustration that
change is limited:
“So there is an awful lot that goes on which, on one hand, is brilliant, but if you are trying to
create a joint step change it's an absolute nightmare.”

8. B. Twitter network
• Key themes – volunteering, gardening, celebration, recycling,
locality.
• Trying to attract media attention – but largely ignored
• Network – tight, personal ties and largely local
• But limited interactions between networks (see below)
• Loose network indicates opportunity for quick flow of
information

9. Network diagram

10. C. Print media analysis
• Food a small part of the press coverage.
– Profile of food culture, food festivals, vs
coverage in local media
– Role of the Food Policy Council not
acknowledged
• Hierarchy of environmental topics in press.
– Transport – congestion, sponsors GWR
– Environmental performance – waste
management
– Urban wildlife – linked to EGC funding
Pic: Bristol 24/7

11. Competing framings
• Activism:
– Ecological limits framing and necessity of/pride in localisation
• Municipal:
– FPC – NHS access and public health – Lang
– Upscaling - FPC, Sustainable Food Cities
– Social-democractic state – public procurement
– Municipal action constrained by austerity framing
• Technocratic :
Globally competitive city (LEP, business, UK govt)

12. Conclusions/questions
• Morgan (2014) questions the ability of the local food activists to lever system
change, while collective action is seen as a form of ‘commoning’ (Bollier).
• We see it differently, via recourse to social movements; and don’t see
governance of commons so much as experiments in citizenship that augment
the constrained (£, plannning regs, hierarchy of causes, publicity) state.
• How effective is the Food Policy Council structure at reflecting grassroots?
– Scoping and vertical integration, not scaling up (Franklin & Marsden 2015)
• Social and print media coverage are quite different. Social media analysis
reveals a distinction between tight (physical), and loose (following)
communication relationships; while print media offers a ‘story’.

13. Thanks for your attention
Matt Reed mreed@glos.ac.uk
Dan Keech dkeech@glos.ac.uk
Please come and see us.