Activities around digging have again become very popular recently, including in the attention they have received from cultural institutions. Many cultural institutions have in recent years recreated wartime (allotment) gardens to highlight a range of different issues and values. Such exhibitions and events, organized during a time of renewed austerity measures, increased concerns around food and the environment, draw obvious parallels to the contemporary moment, offering possibilities to rethink our own values. This panel brings together exciting new research that focuses on this renewed interest in growing your own food. The first half of the panel highlights work from the recently completed ‘Everyday Growing Cultures’ project, which focused on the potentially transformative value of connecting two currently disparate communities: allotments growers and the open data community. Based on comparative research in Manchester and Sheffield, it explores potential effects of digital engagement and open data for allotment holders to build stronger, more active communities, benefit local economies and improve environmental sustainability and food security. The second half of the panel seeks to understand the different ways in which issues around digging have reemerged in recent years, to understand these by looking at how they have been expressed and mobilized by different people and actors. This can be expressed as actual digging linked to food production, symbolic digging as performance, digging up local histories, or as new forms of gift-giving. Panel presentations from: Farida Vis, Ian Humphrey, Yana Manyukhina and Penny Rivlin. Penny's slides will be uploaded separately.

1. Everyday Growing and Digging Cultures
E
veryday Growing Cultures (EPSRC funded, PI: Farida Vis)
Co-investigators: Peter Jackson, Andrew Miles and Erinma Ochu
Researchers: Ian Humphrey, Yana Manyukhina P
roject partners: Caroline
Ward (BBC), Steven Flower (ODM), Ric Roberts (Swirrl), Kirstin
Glendinning (Kindling Trust), Danny Antrobus (Grow Sheffield)
W everydaygrowingcultures.org | T #growingcultures
:
:
Cultural Values of Digging (AHRC funded, PI: Farida Vis)
Co-investigators: Peter Jackson, Andrew Miles and Erinma Ochu
Researcher: Penny Rivlin
W culturalvaluesofdigging.wordpress.com | T #culturalvalue
:
:
MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bournemouth, 9th January 2014

2. Mapping as a tool for growing
communities
Ian Humphrey, Peter Jackson and Farida Vis
Everyday Growing Cultures (Cultures and Communities Network +, EPSRC)
MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bournemouth, 9th January 2014

3. Cartography as a contested tradition
• Mapping has a long and contested history,
rooted in the politics of Empire and military
conquest (JB Harley, maps as ideology, serving
specific interests while claiming to be neutral/objective)
• Can mapping be appropriated for more
progressive ends? (local community food projects,
promoting access to fresh affordable fruit and veg, social
justice, public health, environmental sustainability).

4. Everyday Growing Cultures
• Recent project in EPSRC’s Cultures and
Communities Network + programme
• Worked with two local food groups, both
involved in mapping projects
• Kindling Trust, Manchester: ‘working towards a just
and ecologically sustainable society’
• Grow Sheffield: ‘celebrates, inspires and raises
awareness of the benefits of growing, harvesting and
sharing food across our communities and city’
• Open Data Manchester & Open Data Sheffield

5. Case studies
Kindling Trust
Grow Sheffield

6. Kindling Trust (Feeding Manchester)
During May we partnered up with Open Data Manchester and
Everyday Growing Cultures to carry out a pilot mapping project in Old
Trafford. The aim of the project was to produce a website with a toolkit
to guide communities throughout the country to carry out their own
mapping initiative with a goal of identifying unused plots of land for
growing food…
We specifically wanted to: develop a map we could integrate with our
existing Feeding Manchester website; enable people to identify
potential growing spaces; connect people interested in doing
something on one or more sites; and more broadly try and change the
way we think and talk about the unused spaces around us, particularly
around council-owned land (Kindling Trust website).

7. Walking and mapping
• On two walking events, the group found 5.2
acres of potential growing land which Kindling
Trust members estimated could produce around
40,000 kg of fruit and vegetables, with a market
value of around £200k
• Uploaded data to Crowdmap as a basis for
discussion with the local authority over land
ownership and access to sites; and a means of
coalescing community.

11. Potential growing
sites identified in
Old Trafford

12. Grow Sheffield
It was useful to go to Manchester but mapping every bit of
available space was not what we really wanted to do [in
Sheffield]. We wanted to look at some spaces and think
about how it could be turned over to community use... and
work out what to do next with the information…
What was unexpected [was that we] noticed cherry trees
and social infrastructure - housing, schools ... and that has
moved my thinking on in terms of what does it take to make
a successful growing space. Part of that is having the social
as well as the physical infrastructure for growing (Danny
Antrobus, Grow Sheffield blog).

13. Route of walk in
Pitsmoor, Sheffield

15. Walking and mapping
For Grow Sheffield, we are starting to think about how
mapping could be used to help people to find growing
spaces, food projects and wild food in their
neighbourhoods, as well as helping connect people who
are interested in organic food growing.
So we used our guided group walk around Pitsmoor to
stimulate our discussion about all the ingredients and steps
required for communities to establish local food growing,
and to get us thinking about the role mapping could play in
Grow Sheffield’s projects and wider work.

16. Mapping as a social practice
• Mapping used for different purposes by each group
• In both cases, mapping helped raise their profile and
make their presence more visible to their Local
Authorities and other potential funding sources
• Maps help legitimise community organizations, bring
evidence together in a powerful visual form, demonstrate
unmet demand and help coordinate community
resources to a common end
• Different kinds of maps: digital/interactive vs. large-scale
physical map.

18. Mapping, talking, cooking, eating…
• Mapping as part of broader set of social practices:
walking and talking, cooking and sharing food (‘growing
community’)
• I think it was interesting not just focusing on the data ...
we had nice food, we got out into the local
neighbourhood and took photos and then we came
together and discussed them – it was a nice activity that
we did – it just so happened that we made data as well
(Steven Flower, Open Data Manchester, interviewed by
Erinma Ochu, Everyday Growing Cultures).

19. Cultural appropriation?
• Coalition government recognised the potential role of
community gardening as means of producing more
resilient communities in current economic recession
• The Big Dig initiative (Social Action Fund) provided
training and advice to 8,000 community food volunteers
across the UK, focusing on people from deprived areas
to create vibrant community food gardens which, officials
claimed, would reduce anti-social behaviour, provide
fresh, healthy food and put pride into communities
(www.bigdig.org.uk/)

21. Conclusions
• Like mapping, digging is a powerful metaphor that can
be mobilised for a variety of purposes (cf. C17th Diggers
movement or the wartime Dig for Victory campaign)
• Exploring these ideas in new project on The Cultural
Values of Digging (AHRC)
• Our collaboration with Grow Sheffield and The Kindling
Trust has reinforced our belief in the power of maps and
mapping, especially when combined with other ways of
engaging communities through walking, talking and
eating together
• Like all cultural forms, the power of maps can be
appropriated for a variety of political ends.

22. Acknowledgements and links
• Everyday Growing Cultures was funded by the
EPSRC (Cultures and Communities Network +):
http://everydaygrowingcultures.org/
• The Cultural Values of Digging is funded by the
AHRC (Cultural Value programme):
http://culturalvaluesofdigging.wordpress.com/

24. Yana Manyukhina, Erinma Ochu, Caroline Ward and
Farida Vis
MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bournemouth, 9th January 2014

25. Everyday Growing Futures film
• Purpose
Methodological value:
• Presenting new ways of creating and sharing knowledge
• Research engagement and impact - reaching wider
audiences
• Deepen understanding and inspire reflection

26. Outcomes of the film
Intended effects
• Share knowledge and experience
• Inspire new possibilities
• Create the feeling of hope
Achieved impact
• Citizen-led greening actions in Trafford
• Growing interest in the film and the issues it raises

28. Cultural Values of Digging
Farida Vis, Peter Jackson, Andrew Miles, Erinma
Ochu, Penny Rivlin
MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bournemouth, 9th January 2014

29. Activities around digging again very popular

30. Everybody wants an allotment, grow their own

31. Cultural Values of Digging
The project examines different forms of digging by studying
their perceived cultural value through five distinct aspects:
• Digging as ‘nation-building’
• Digging as ‘lifestyle choice’
• Digging for ‘heritage’
• Digging to enable ‘community building’
• Digging as ‘gift’
We focus on two different social scales: looking both at
individual and community groups, and by examining the
mainstream media and recent relevant policy initiatives.

32. Our research questions
1. What are the different cultural values associated with
digging and how are they articulated through the five
identified thematic strands as well as the different social
scales and institutional levels?
2. How are different historical reference points used to
articulate and explain these values?
3. How is digging linked to ideas of citizenship and relevant
to what it means to be British today?
4. What are the different imagined futures and societal
trajectories associated with these values?

33. Three historical motives and movements
“England is not a free people, till the poor that have no
land, have a free allowance to dig and labour the commons..”
Gerrard Winstanley, 1649

34. Recent context
• In 2011 the Department for Communities and Local
Government (DCLG) threatened to scrap the Allotment
Act (1908), it was saved by a strong public response.
Press coverage: Is this the end of ‘The Good Life?’
• Renewed cultural and political currency, entwined with
notions of locally oriented consumerism, sustainability,
grassroots community action against austerity
• Physical acts of digging as embodiment of community
• Rediscovery of C17 The Diggers and Gerrard
Winstanley
• Policy initiatives: Giving White Paper (2011) – digging as
‘gift’: ‘better connected communities’ ‘rebuilding trust’
• Big Dig set up: ‘broaden culture of giving’, ‘giving as
social norm’, inspiring ‘next generation of givers’

35. 1. UK print media representations, 2000 - 2012
• Case study operates at an institutional level, focuses on
different values of digging presented in UK national
press. Search terms: ‘allotment’ and ‘grow your own’
• Focuses on main newspaper coverage, excluding
magazines and supplements. Interested in studying the
‘newsworthiness’ of digging and its media framing.
2001 – 2010: 427 stories (allotment)
2001 – 2010: 341 stories (GYO)
Increased popularity of allotments
Rent increases
Waiting lists
Solutions for growing demand for allotments
Economic benefits (saving money, making
money from your produce)
Celebrities growing their own

36. 2. The Winstanley Festival
Yes, that’s me…
The festival stresses ‘a re-born
sense of community spirit amongst
ordinary people everywhere’
5 in-depth interviews

37. 3. Recreating a wartime garden
• Inspired by the work of C.H. Middleton (1945), the
pioneer of the 1940s Dig for Victory campaign, this case
study examines how one family is using Middleton’s
writing to recreate a 1943 wartime garden. Interview

39. 4. The Big Dig
• Institutional level, examines the ‘Big Dig’ project, which
seeks to attract people from derived areas who typically
don’t volunteer. Focus on local people to create: ‘vibrant
community food gardens, which can reduce anti-social
behaviour, provide fresh, healthy food and put pride into
communities’. 4 in-depth interviews

40. End of project event
8th of March in Manchester (Friends Meeting House)
If you’d like to join us, please get in touch:
f.vis@sheffield.ac.uk | @flygirltwo