URBAN DWELLERS in food deserts – deprived city areas where fresh food is difficult or expensive to buy

URBAN DWELLERS in “food deserts” – deprived city areas where fresh food is difficult or expensive to buy – have come up with an enterprising solution: to grow their own. Instead of relying on the corner shop where prices are high and fruit and vegetables in short supply, people living in inner cities are learning to dig for their groceries. As well as providing food, the aim is to bring a hint of greenery to concrete wastelands where the only thing blossoming is graffiti.
CityHarvest, run by the National Food Alliance, is working with local communities to help people to grow their own food on derelict land, in school grounds and parks, and revive interest in allotments. Cultivating urban land is seen as a way of countering the shortage of cheap, nutritious food on sale in inner cities due to the trend to out-of-town supermarkets.In Camberwell, south London, a community orchard has been planted on a plot surrounded by concrete and next to the magistrates’ court. A set of abandoned council greenhouses in Brockwell Park is being restored to grow medicinal herbs, and in Hackney, east London, pupils at Grazebrook primary school are growing fruit and vegetables in the playground. Similar projects in Manchester and Oxford have involved people with mental and physical disabilities and made use of every square inch of space from tower-block window boxes to railway verges.The lack of fresh food available to mothers and children in deprived areas was highlighted by the Inquiry into Health Inequalities, commissioned by the Government and chaired by former chief medical officer Sir Donald Acheson. Sir Donald warned in the inquiry report, published in November, that hunger had reappeared on city streets, where mothers on low incomes were going without meals to feed their children, and that the effects of poor nutrition would be felt down the generations.Jeanette Longfield, co-ordinator of CityHarvest, which is partly funded by the Kings Fund, said: “People are worried the food they buy isn’t safe and they want to grow their own.

The unemployed want something useful to do and people are keen to help regenerate their local area. Growing food in cities tackles both social exclusion and health inequalities. It helps to overcome the difficulties people have in obtaining healthy food and improving their local environment.”In many of the projects, the amount of food produced is small but the benefits in terms of community development, attitudes to nutrition and improvements in the local environment are large.Green Adventure in south London has been awarded a lottery grant of pounds 150,000 over three years to convert abandoned council greenhouses in Brockwell Park. “The council decided it was cheaper to import plants from Kent than grow their own and had used the greenhouses as parking space,” said Stefanya Strega, the co-ordinator. “We have spent three months clearing rubbish and are now restoring them.

We have consulted tenants’ associations and pensioners groups and the aim is to grow useful plants, such as fruit and vegetables and herbs Some people are taking classes in medicinal herbs.”. A YEAR-LONG, pounds 34m celebration of architecture through a collection of shows, tours, workshops and lectures begins in Glasgow this week with an opening exhibition on the role of design in the world of sport. Scotland’s second city is expecting hundreds of thousands of visitors to the shows celebrating Glasgow’s rich architectural heritage.
More than 300 exhibitions will be staged throughout Glasgow’s year as the UK City of Architecture and Design, promoting the achievements of local heroes such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh as well as taking a wider view of international achievements in building and design.The organisers believe a mixture of the city’s grand Victorian legacy and ambitious avant-garde efforts make Glasgow well qualified for the title – an accolade bestowed by the then Arts Council of Great Britain, whose judges included Sir Terence Conran.The scheme is part of the Arts 2000 initiative, which aimed to associate every year in the 1990s with a British city and one of the arts. The 1996 year of Visual Arts in Tyneside, for example, provided the impetus for Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North.The organisers of Glasgow’s celebration hope that this year will complete a transformation begun with its successful year as European City of Culture in 1990. They hope finally to lay to rest the reputation Glasgow had of being home to gang warfare and urban deprivation.”People saw Glasgow in terms of derelict shipyards and Rab C Nesbitt,” said Deyan Sudjic, director of Glasgow 1999, a charitable company set up to co-ordinate the year’s events, “but it has a fantastic Victorian heart and classical buildings.

We want to change the way people see design and the way they see Glasgow.”Among the highlights of the year will be an exhibition on “The architecture of democracy”, held to coincide with the creation of Scotland’s new assembly. The show will explore the design of parliamentary buildings, including that of Enric Miralles for the new assembly in Edinburgh.The work of the artist, architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) will feature heavily throughout the year. Mackintosh is often described as “Glasgow’s Gaudi” and his first significant public building has been restored as the flagship building of the 1999 celebrations. The Lighthouse, formerly a newspaper office, has stood empty for 15 years.Other buildings testifying to the hold that Mackintosh has over the city include his masterpiece, the Glasgow School of Art building, and the Mackintosh Mansion House for an Art Lover, which was completed in 1996 from plans the architect drew up almost 100 years ago, embracing most of the techniques and touches that were his hallmarks.Organisers are also using the year to present the work of the city’s other architects and designers.

Those include Alexander “Greek” Thompson, who is being promoted as the city’s “unknown genius”. Thompson was renowned for using classical, as well as Egyptian and Hindu, designs and the classic villa of Holmwood House is viewed as the greatest of his legacies.There will also be an international element to the festival, with exhibitions on the American expressionist architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the leading contemporary designer Philippe Starck, a Frenchman renowned for innovative designs of just about every household product.”We’re working with local Glasgow and Scottish designers but also embracing European and international architects,” said Caroline Newson, a spokeswoman for Glasgow 1999.. MORE THAN 100 traumatised children of Omagh, including a two- year-old girl, are having psychological treatment at a recovery centre set up after the bombing that devastated the Co Armagh market town four months ago. Twenty-nine people and two unborn babies were killed in the worst single atrocity of the Troubles. There were also 370 people injured, a significant proportion of them children.