AESOP4Food seminar 2024

A Transdisciplinary and Participatory Approach to Food System Resilience Planning

Discover the future of sustainable food planning with the AESOP4FOOD Erasmus+ program in 2024 an engaging online open course that's designed to empower individuals from diverse backgrounds, fostering a transdisciplinary and participatory learning experience.

Registration is now closed

All applicants who have registered are accepted. Students of partner schools, of the Tartu, and the Bucharest living lab can address themselves for additional registration to their university contact person. Those who still want to benefit from the course can view the presentations and recordings, which will be available after each session. These will be presented on the bottom of this page. [and recordings of the previous course in 2023 can be found here].

Content and schedule

Key concepts: Agroecological Urbanism, Regional Agroecological Food Systems, Multi-level Governance, Food Justice, and Democracy.

Join us on Thursdays from 17:00 CET for 10 sessions with 2 presentations for assignments.

International Collaboration: Embrace the opportunity to collaborate with international participants, each bringing their unique background and expertise from planning disciplines, agronomy, environmental sciences, and related fields.

Transdisciplinary Approach: Explore the theoretical foundations, case studies, and project presentations and engage in transdisciplinary learning, facilitated by Participatory Action Learning Research and Action Learning Research (PALAR).

Flexible: Learners, teachers, and teams can integrate this course into their own studio, project work or capacity building while formulating their own assignments. This approach is supported by a series of Living Labs focusing on food resilience.

Forms of Participation

1. Lectures and Discussions: Attend insightful lectures and engage in stimulating discussions to expand your knowledge.
2. Assignments (5 ECTS): Dive deeper into sustainable food planning by working on practical assignments. Collaborate with small teams focused on Living Labs or projects, benefit from additional tutoring and feedback sessions, and present your results in intermediary sessions.

Phases and sessions of the course

Here you will find the presentations and recordings after each session. Those of the previous seminar in 2023 can be found here.

Phase 1 - exploring the field of play - sessions on February 29 and March 7, 2024

Themes: Main challenges, Theoretical frameworks, Approaches and methods: PAR, living labs, analysing methods; Defining your position and values

• Understands the concept of food systems in their cultural, local and regional setting.
• Can explain the main concepts related to participatory learning and research and the role of living labs.
• Can explain the main concepts related to sustainable food planning.
• Is aware of contemporary challenges to sustainable food systems in the context of spatial planning.
• Develops an understanding of the multiple dimensions of food systems: social, environmental, economic and spatial.
• Can define her/his own position and values regarding sustainable food planning.

Roxana Triboi, LE:NOTRE Institute, presented an overview of the seminar with the main learning goals and Jeroen de Vries introduced the main concepts and the assignments. Damien Conaré, l'Institut Agro Montpellier, provided insight into the field of play, looking back at the development of food systems and showing the impact of the current system. He presented current initiatives and policies for sustainable food planning. You can view the PowerPoint here.

Jeroen de Vries, LE:NOTRE Institute presented a recap on the first session and highlighted the discourse that Chiara Tornaghi proposed in her paper on the Food Disabling City. The Long Food Movement report shows a positive scenario with a bottom-up approach that is empowered by civil society, in which each of us can choose a pathway that is most suited. The policy document for Agroforestry in the Netherlands shows how a multi-level approach can link niche initiatives to national and regional policies. Michiel Dehaene, Universiteit Gent, presented the development of the approach of an AGroecological Urbanism, with a set of building blocks that can be used as thematic entries for all planners. You can view the powerpoint presentation here.

Presentation of the introduction of participatory action research March 5, 2024

Jeroen de Vries, LE:NOTRE Institute, presented quality criteria, validation, and methods for participatory action research based on the publication of Wood and his experience in the Landscape Democracy Project. You can view the presentation here.

Phase 2: Analysing your local foodscape sessions on March 14 and 21, 2024

Themes: Mapping a food system; Mapping the stakeholders, consumers, and policymakers (power mapping); SWOT analysis

• Can map and evaluate a concrete situation of a food system.
• Can select the most adequate methods and tools to be applied for analysis and evaluation.
• Can identify stakeholders and power structures in a new and unknown context.
• Can map a local or city/region food system.
• Can define the most relevant challenges in a collaborative way.

Phase 3. Collaborative goals and vision

Themes: Collaborative goal setting; Selecting the challenges to address

• Can apply techniques of collaborative goal setting.
• Can formulate an approach and/or a possible solution for a selected challenge that is related to his/her own competences and role in the system.

Phase 4: Strategy and interventions

Themes: Scenarios, alternatives, strategy, prototyping, testing

• Can develop a strategy based on a joint vision making use of methods of scenario planning of alternatives.
• Can select and apply methods and tools for prototyping.
• Can develop a prototype based on the strategy and present it to/ discuss it with others for testing and evaluating.

Phase 5: Evaluation & monitoring

Themes: collaborative evaluation; self-reflection

• Is able to have a critical reflection of the role of the planner in a pluralistic society (expert vs facilitator).
• Is able to reflect on his/her own process, using feedback from others reflecting on cultural, social and economic differences.