SeasonsPace (respecting the pace of the seasons, and giving them space in our lives) was the initiative of Dervila Cooke, a lecturer in French studies at Dublin City University in Ireland, in June 2020. She was frustrated to see so many vegetables in the supermarkets that had travelled unnecessarily around the globe. She had noticed many great local growing initiatives in France, and was keen to see similar initiatives in Ireland, and to promote other local growing initiatives globally, She felt this was particularly important in urban environments where what’s in season or growing locally is not always immediately obvious in one’s surroundings. France has long been a centre for community gardening (with its jardins communautaires and jardins partagés) and there is a current very inspiring wave of growing fruit and vegetables on urban streets, in municipal parks and on rooftops in Paris and elsewhere.
During one of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Dervila started thinking about how to create an international network of urban local growers, ranging from individuals growing vegetables or herbs in their windowboxes or on their balconies, to growers in schools, community gardens, private allotments, or small urban farms, and beyond. The pilot project “SeasonsPace” was born, with the help of seed funding from the Irish Research Council New foundations awards. Gillian Jein, an urban studies specialist at the French department of Newcastle University in the UK got on board for the first iteration of SeasonsPace, and the Newcastle-Dublin-Paris triangle (or triad) continued to grow.
In April 2021, staff at DCU’s Institute of Education, Susan Pike and Orla Kelly, joined Dervila to co- create the schools aspect of SeasonsPace (“SeasonsPace schools”), a pilot project with an emphasis on Growing and Thinking. A scheme of work was created that can be used in primary (elementary) and secondary (high) schools. The “SeasonsPace schools” pilot project wants to see more reflections in schools nationally about food provenance and locally grown food in the community alongside the actual practice of local seasonal growing by schoolchildren. For time efficiency and depth of learning, this would ideally be embedded in the curriculum, and teachers would be trained in basic growing as part of their initial teacher training. The “SeasonsPace schools” pilot project encourages growing (and thinking about local food in a global context) in each of the school terms. This is possible in the cool temperate climate of Ireland. Continued growing over the summer months of school closure also be possible if caretakers agree to keep crops like pumpkins and garlic watered till September!
In October 2021, two foundational SeasonsPace events took place: an online workshop bringing together growers and thinkers from community gardens and “growing projects” in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Paris and Ireland, with five speakers and more than 100 participants, and an on-site day seminar on the inspiring site of Airfield Estate in Dublin. A schools event was also organised in October 2021, to showcase some of the life-enhancing work being done with, and by, younger people.
For more on SeasonsPace see these two links.
On the community garden network aspect see this link: https://www.dcu.ie/Seasons_Pace
On the schools aspect see this link: https://www.dcu.ie/
SeasonsPace also seeks to grow an academic network of researchers interested in the impact of local seasonal growing and purchasing on society.
Localgrowplanet is an off-shoot of SeasonsPace, and is easier to pronounce for an international audience. It is hoped that the initiatives developed as SeasonsPace will continue to grow and flourish, with the help of Localgrowplanet.org.
