Hands and Heart Community Garden
290 New Lots Avenue
27,405 sq ft
Participatory design research · 2022
East New York
A pilot program addressing lack of access to healthy foods, green spaces, and vulnerability to heat in New York City’s most affected areas — co-designed with public schools, students and faculty, community gardens, private businesses, and municipal organizations.
Co-Designing Alternative Futures — Food · Health · Education · Environment | Community · Collaboration · Ownership
The case
A neighborhood with a distinct food environment
The work produces a duplicable framework to combat issues facing lower-income communities throughout New York City, built on the wealth of knowledge gained through the collaborative process in East New York. The paper provides a road map towards collaboration between community garden organizations and local schools as an avenue to promote health.
Access to affordable healthy foods is named one of the top three pressing issues in the Statements of Community District 5 Needs (Fiscal Year 2023), alongside social services and trash removal.
One in four children experiences food insecurity or hunger in the United States.
Health indicators · East New York vs. New York City
- Childhood obesity
- 25%
- 21% citywide
- Adult obesity
- 35%
- 24% citywide
- Diabetes prevalence
- 14%
- 11% citywide
- High blood pressure
- 34%
- 28% citywide
What is actually on the corridor
The food environment, counted
When supermarkets within a community are less common than bodegas, the health of its members suffers. This is the count for East New York.
- 135 Bodegas 51%
- 71 Fast food restaurants 27%
- 13 Grocery stores 5%
- 12 Specialty grocery 4.5%
- 8 Fruit and vegetable stores 3%
The percentage of East New York and Starrett City adults who report eating at least one serving of fruits or vegetables is 76% — lower than the citywide average of 87%, and lower than the Brooklyn average of 86%.
Partners on the ground
Four community gardens, and East New York Farms
The social underpinnings of gardens give rise to social connections, reciprocity, mutual trust, collective decision-making, and civic engagement — processes associated with improving individual health and strengthening neighborhoods.
Jerome Gardens
447 Jerome Street
12,000 sq ft
Nehemiah Ten Community Garden
565 Barbey Street
2,245 sq ft
Hendrix Street Community Garden
532 Hendrix Street
1,375 sq ft
The method, as run
Six co-design workshops
The study is a road map towards collaboration between community garden organizations and local schools. These are the activities that road map is built from.
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Identifying Community Resources
Mapping · Flash thinking · Collective thoughts
Identifying to mobilize community assets enables community residents to gain control over their lives, and seek changes they desire.
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What’s on your Plate!
Shadowing · Social
Select a partner to explore with. Inquire about daily meals. Keep record of daily meals for further exploration.
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You Are What You Eat
Shadowing · Crowd sourcing
A week of records, reviewed together. Create new eating habits. Design a healthier you.
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Demystifying Colonial Production of Food
Food mapping
Food feeds the soul, fuels the body, affects the environment, inspires artists, influences politics, and impacts just about every part of our lives. Knowing its history is power.
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Shade Mapping
Collective
Mapping where shade exists and where it does not — heat vulnerability made legible at street level.
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Community Gardens: Laboring Together
Co-labor
Students participate in the grow process through co-laboring with community gardeners, gaining knowledge from within the community’s urban farms while developing agency and a sense of belonging. Students can also receive instructional lessons at community gardens based on each garden’s capacity and usability, while earning credits towards school classes.
Source Final Book East New York 2022
Where the findings went
From study to collection
Workshop four — Demystifying Colonial Production of Food — is the direct ancestor of the Food Guardians. The line the workshop opened with is the line the collection still runs on: knowing the history of food is power.
Spatial companion