Mundraub held a workshop in Eltville / Rhine Area. Together with citizens we talked about easily implementable ECS. In the beginning we introduced the auditorium to the idea of Edible Cities. Then we worked in small groups and developed solutions that can easily be implemented in Eltville and the might be accepted by the city authorities. In the end we planted a Sweet Chestnut Tree in the City Park. Thanks to the Youth Center Eltville that enabled the Workshop and hosted it in their rooms. Thanks to the City Council that gave us space to plant the tree.

In the past months, ICRA and BOKU have been working together to transform the information of Deliverable 4.3. (“Documentation of ECSs in FCs”) into Edible City Solutions (ECS) profiles in the EdiCitNet toolbox (see https://toolbox.edicitnet.com/). This type of collaboration is very relevant to ensure a long-term impact of EdiCitNet project, since it ensures that the data collected during the execution of the project is properly stored in the EdiCitNet database and public available in a user-friendly format.

As a result of this fruitful collaboration, 85 profiles of Edible City Solutions from Berlin (35), Carthage (16), Montevideo (16), Sant Feliu de llobregat (11), Šempeter pri Gorici (6), Lome (1), are publicly available in the EdiCitNet toolbox.

Now, ICRA and BOKU are working on a strategy to transfer the management and editing rights of these profiles to the owners/coordinators of the Edible City Solutions.

By having the ownership, they will be able to:

• Interact with other existing initiatives by leaving and receiving comments and questions thought the profiles, think of it as a social media outlet for urban food initiatives.
• Edit the profile or even delete it.
• Soon they will also be able to share events and news related to their ECS profile with the community.

This week, the interdisciplinary teams of city officials, local food initiatives, research organisations and members of the public of Sant Feliu de Llobregat (Spain) and Carthage (Tunisia) met online to discuss the status quo of their local food systems. The meeting was co-led by our project partners from the Institute of Organic Farming at BOKU University Vienna and the School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering at the University of Brighton (UoB).

Aim of the workshop-like meeting was to kick-off an exchange between cities that are interested in using UoB’s opportunity mapping process within WP4’s transition pathway method to address specific societal challenges in relation to their local food systems.

Carthage and Sant Feliu de Llobregat share certain general urban characteristics – f.e. the proximity to major urban centres (Tunis and Barcelona) – whilst they differ in others – f.e. the access to water. During the last two years, the city teams in both cities have met regularly to discuss the status quo of their local food systems, collect as much data on their local situation as possible, as well as to extract and agree on where the major challenges lie for implementing resilient, equitable and enjoyable urban (food) futures within their communities.

In preparation of the meeting, Ian and Katrin have taken the two cities’ observations, data and thoughts and systematised them into first drafts of key societal challenges that now make the cities comparable to each other as well as to urban food systems discourses worldwide. Key themes in both cities include the necessity to safeguard and improve local agricultural production as well as access to nature. Sant Feliu de Llobregathas extracted the need to focus on food education, amongst others, whilst Carthage, amongst others, is challenged by the heritage status of many of its open spaces.

During the EdiCitNet annual meeting (2021), ICRA and UL teams offered an interactive workshop to explore the multi facets of the EdiCitNet Toolbox. The workshop aimed to get consortium partners to know better the TOOLBOX, showcase how the TOOLBOX can be useful through its features/tools, promote inclusive /participative testing to enhance the TOOLBOX and thus foster it’s use during and beyond the project. First, we performed an interactive demonstration in which Participants created profiles for their initiatives, they checked how the profile look like and then and played with the tools (assessment and design and planning).

Next, we had an interactive feedback session. We made tree statements in which participants could strongly agree (score 5) and strongly disagree (score 1). Participants strongly agreed that it is easy to create a profile for initiatives in the toolbox online interface (average score 4.3), that the performance tool is useful to explore and compare different initiatives in terms of sustainability urban challenges and ecosystem services (Average score 4) and that the design and planning tool can help people create their own edible city solution (Average score 3.7). We also asked participants to provide words to define how they perceive the toolbox.

Some of the words were innovative, full of possibilities, informative, modern, interactive, useful, helpful, interesting, easy. These results showed that the Toolbox is becoming more and more user friendly and useful, according to the perception of participants of the workshop. Finally, we asked participants What would they like to see in the toolbox and how can we improve what we already have? We are currently working on the received suggestions, which are mainly concerning technical aspects of the tools (e.g. link with other existing databases as for example FAO climate database).

On 29th and 30th September 2021, partners and consortium members of EdiCitNet participated in the third edition of the EdiCitNet Annual Meeting. While the meeting was held online due to the ongoing pandemic, some partners got the chance to attend the meeting in person in local clusters, including in Berlin, Ljubljana and Girona.  It was a pleasant change to see so many project partners meeting together around Europe – following the necessary hygiene regulations, of course!

After a warm welcome by the coordination team, the project’s new grant manager was formally introduced to the partners. This was followed by short presentations and work updates by all of the different Work Packages leads. After lunch, all attendees got the chance to take part in one of the interactive workshops on offer. The topics of the workshops were:

• Learnings from the Living Labs

This workshop was led by Work Package 5 and offered a summary of the work done in the project’s Living Labs – in Berlin, Oslo, Andernach and Rotterdam – and the different methods and indicators used to measure progress and project successes.

• Building a Community of Practice: Governance, Engagement and Integration of ECS in planning 

Led by Work Package 4, this workshop looked at how the City Teams were functioning, how to integrate the Edible Cities concept into urban planning and discussed ideas around how best to build an interactive and sustainable community of practice.

• Hands-on Experience with the EdiCitNet Toolbox: Create, Design and Explore your ECS Profile

The third workshop was organized by Work Package 2 and introduced different aspects and functionalities of the EdiCitNet Toolbox to the partners, including technical parameters on how to maintain an ECS with regard to required water, soil, nutrient cycle, and more.

Day 2 included a session on reporting issues with a current status update from all partners as well as a discussion on open questions, an introduction to the project’s new Community Management Tool (LINK) and an Extraordinary General Assembly, where the eligible partners voted to consolidate and strengthen the Edible Cities Network further by merging and integrating the – currently separate – EdiCitNet Toolbox(LINK) and EdiCitNet Marketplace (LINK) into one joint platform.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the EdiCitNet Annual Meeting 2021! We look forward to seeing you again next time.

After the IRI THESys Edible City Solutions Summer School was cancelled in 2020 due to the ongoing pandemic in Berlin, in 2021 the EdiCitNet team re-designed the schedule so that it would work in a purely digital format – with online lectures and virtual group work. The team embarked on this 2-week learning journey with 30 participants from Asia, Africa, Europe, South and North America, exploring sustainable urban food systems with many talented and experienced experts from among the EdiCitNet project partners – including the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership, Prinzessinnengärten Kollektiv, Association la Recherche en Action, Transition Oststeiermark, the City of Andernach and Bundesverband Gebäudegrün e. V. – BuGG.

The summer school opened with a public webinar entitled “Urban Transformation: Building City Resilience with Edible City Solutions”, led by Dr Ina Säumel, Suhana Reddy and Thomas Wachtel from the EdiCitNet Project. Then the participants were introduced to their challenge for the next two weeks – to develop their very own Edible City Solution, designed to tackle specific urban challenges in a city of their choice.

Throughout the two weeks, the participants were introduced to the four pillars of Edible City Solutions – social, economic, ecological and political – via input sessions with experts from the field. In between the sessions, they worked collectively on their group projects, across time zones and borders, using Miro, Slack, Zoom, Moodle and other online tools. At the halfway point, the Berlin participants of the Edible City Solutions Summer School even got the chance to meet offline as they went on a “Harvest Your City” foraging tour through the city with project partner Mundraub. At the end of each week, in an interactive “Reality Check” session, the groups pitched their creative Edible City concepts to the panel of experts and received practical feedback on the feasibility and potential impact of their concepts.

The final Edible City Solutions included: a citizens’ cooperative turning rice straw residue into biochar in Valencia (Spain) the development of policies and guidelines to support the integration of edible landscapes into the outskirts of Girona (Spain), an edible garden initiative for social housing in Vienna (Austria), the installation of a rooftop farm in an abandoned carpark in Berlin (Germany) and a strategy to strengthen a farm-to-fork initiative in Jeonju (Korea), through the introduction of permaculture practices.

When asked if they enjoyed the summer school the participants said:

“It was fantastic! Great choice of lectures and speakers to teach on the 4 pillars each lesson.”

“I enjoyed these days a lot, thank you! I hope that from here new real edible projects emerge and we can continue sharing knowledge.”

“I loved the “Harvest your City” tour where I learned how biodiverse a city can be. Within just an hour, I became much more sensitive to my surroundings.”

And what did they learn?

 “Inspiration comes when different countries and backgrounds work together.”

“The value of transdisciplinarity!”

 “Learners from all over the world can cooperate and come up with amazing ideas!”

“I have identified an area in my city that has loads of potential for an ECS. WE will be coming up with a plan to take to the municipality!”

We thank all of the participants and all of the experts who took part, for their dedication and motivation throughout these two inspiring weeks. We look forward to the next edition of the ECS Summer School, set to take place in summer 2022.