Guiding principles:
- Leadership Development : Communication, critical reflection, action planning, and more…
- Experiential Learning: Hands-on, collaborative, and participatory reflection process
- Food Systemic Thinking: An interdisciplinary study of Food Systems Sustainability
Methodology:
Activities includes seminars, work-in-group sessions as well as recreationnal activities and free time in order to stimulate dialogue and thinking among the participants and the speakers, all along the week.
Participants – through lectures, discussions, design making, workshops, Skype Q and A sessions with experts, site visits – will investigate food sustainable systems with the understanding that truly sustainable solutions take into account not only the biodiversity/soil/water environment, but also the people, culture and economy,the context of a given place.
Curricular framework:
All editions include a broad introduction to the question of Sustainable Food Systems as an interdisciplinary concept as it has been developed since the launch of the Eating City Platform 2010-2014. Although every Eating city Summer Campus program uses similar activity schedules, the lectures address a different side of this issue. Plenary courses sessions are given by professionals and experts working in universities, companies, local authorities and civil society.
Depending on the main thematic of the campus, specific issues are ranging from: sustainable food production systems, agro-ecology, public food service and procurement, food inter-cultural aspects, communication and marketing, etc.
Writing a Common Declaration:
Participants are asked to write all together a Common Declaration to express their vision on Sustainable Food Systems by angling the text accordingly to the main thematic of the campus.
This process, entirely in their hands is supported during the different working group sessions taking place everyday, alternatively with plenary sessions. The final day is entirely dedicated to the sharing of ideas by all the groups and to the common writing of the declaration, named after the Place of the Campus: the Villarceaux Declaration.
The Melting Pot Dinner
All participants are asked to bring a piece of food that is traditionnal of the area. This food is shared during the first dinner. By the way, participants are also asked to bring songs and music instruments.
Melting Pot Dinner is always a moment of great fun as well as an opportunity to taste unusual food, to understand the importance of local traditions and values and to allow all participants to tune more easily with the others, the aim of the meeting and the place.
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the program, participants should have a solid, coherent understanding of what it means for Food Systems Sustainability, and the related challenges faced by human communities at global, local level. Students will also have begun the important process of thinking critically about what we can do individually, collectively and feel empowered to be themselves an agent for positive change.
Course Requirements:
Students should be prepared to engage in the subject matter intellectually. This does not necessitate any previous coursework beyond a freshman universitary course or a work experience. Motivated students will have no problem with the course material provided that they are prepared to do the reading and the work that compliment all of the “experiential” aspects of the program.
Participants are required to speak and write fluently english.
Experiential Learning:
Most of the active learning for student will be the writing of common declaration and also the practice of the World Café Method. Young people with different geographical origins and academic backgrounds will experiment joint force thinking on broad and complex matters to produce a simple and consensual message reflecting as much as possible all their individual inputs.