We had a really successful mapping event last night (1st May) in Old Trafford. A dozen people: local residents, community gardeners and academics helped us map potential food growing spaces around St Johns Church on Ayres Road.
It was a glorious sunny evening, so we tried to keep the time we spend in front of computers to a minimum.
Kindling gave a quick presentation on the potential of urban food growing, offering examples of growing techniques and thus land, containers, walls etc. which can be utilised to grow food.
Steven Flower from Open Data Manchester then explained the purpose of the evening and what we hope to achieve from our mapping project.
Farida Vis from Sheffield University's Everyday Growing Cultures introduced her work to collate allotment data and the use of Freedom of Information requests to find out about waiting lists etc.
Once we'd had soup we split into pairs and headed off with a map, note pad and digital camera. Teams had dedicated areas to survey, marking locations on the map, taking photos and recording any observations or thoughts about the suitability of the site. Such things included size, access, existing use, orientation to the sun, neighbours etc.
Once everyone had returned we uploaded the photos and will continue to upload the data to a site at: www.crowdmap.com.
We finished the evening with feedback and we got loads of ideas about how we can improve the events and how we can become more efficient at collecting the information, which we have taken on board for our next session in a fortnight.
This was the first of two pilot events (the next one being on the 15th May) to see what information we can glean with the help of volunteers about potential growing land in a community.
Old Trafford was chosen because the council are being very supportive by providing additional information about land ownership and in the past they have shown a commitment to open data with a street tree mapping project. (see: http://traffordopendata.heroku.com/trees). Additionally, many local residents want to see more communal gardening and volunteers at the St Johns Community Centre, who hosted the events, have been really keen to get involved.
The two mapping sessions will result in a small area of Old Trafford almost completely mapped and will act as an example of what is possible - both in terms of collation of possible locations and crucially how we use such information to increase urban food production.
Later in the year (probably in the summer) we are to organise a Hack Day at Manchester's Mad Lab, bring together programmers to use the data collected to start creating a useful online resource.
We have been inspired by a website in America called 596 Acres and we would love to see one of these for Greater Manchester.
Please contact Kirstin at Kindling for more information and to register a place on our next session: kirstin@kindling.org.uk or 07947 715715