Browsing by Author "Watkins A"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Delivering Urban Wellbeing through Transformative Community Enterprise
    (2019) Dombroski K; Diprose G; Conradson D; Healy S; Watkins A
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Food for people in place: reimagining resilient food systems for economic recovery
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2020-11-11) Dombroski K; Diprose G; Sharp E; Graham R; Lee L; Scobie M; Richardson S; Watkins A; Martin-Neuninger R
    The COVID-19 pandemic and associated response have brought food security into sharp focus for many New Zealanders. The requirement to “shelter in place” for eight weeks nationwide, with only “essential services” operating, affected all parts of the New Zealand food system. The nationwide full lockdown highlighted existing inequities and created new challenges to food access, availability, affordability, distribution, transportation, and waste management. While Aotearoa New Zealand is a food producer, there remains uncertainty surrounding the future of local food systems, particularly as the long-term effects of the pandemic emerge. In this article we draw on interviews with food rescue groups, urban farms, community organisations, supermarket management, and local and central government staff to highlight the diverse, rapid, community-based responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings reveal shifts at both the local scale, where existing relationships and short supply chains have been leveraged quickly, and national scale, where funding has been mobilised towards a different food strategy. We use these findings to re-imagine where and how responsibility might be taken up differently to enhance resilience and care in diverse food systems in New Zealand.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    When Cultivate Thrives: Developing Criteria for Community Economy Return on Investment
    (University of Canterbury, 2018-04) Dombroski K; Diprose G; Conradson D; Healy S; Watkins A
    Urban communities around the world are using farming and gardening to promote food security, social inclusion and wellbeing. For Christchurch-based Cultivate, urban farms are not only physical places but also incorporate an innovative community economy premised on using common resources such as vacant urban land and green waste, to offer care for urban youth. Cultivate’s two urban farms are an important aspect of this care, for it is here that supportive and informally therapeutic environments are co-created and experienced by youth interns, urban farmers, trained social workers and volunteers. Cultivate’s urban farms are innovative examples of creative urban wellbeing initiatives that may be valuable for other organisations seeking to promote youth wellbeing and social development, both across New Zealand and further afield. To document and measure the holistic impact of Cultivate, we used a collaborative approach with Cultivate stakeholders to further develop an existing assessment tool: the Community Economy Return on Investment (CEROI). The project will finish in November 2018 with a series of workshops with urban designers to test and promote the use of the tool as a method for communicating the non-monetary return on investment to a wider community involved with other urban wellbeing projects.