This week it almost felt like we were presented with a hunger-themed pintrest board. A whole bunch of stories and organizations that probably each have inspiring and notable qualities. While the organization of options and groups was a bit overwhelming to me, there was one aspect of the webpage that I was immediately drawn to – a map. On this particular map there was a location geotag attributed to each article displayed on the page.
The map is the classic google map interface, and the tags become more accurately location based as you zoom in. I found this characteristic very intriguing because while it would make more sense to just show each location at it’s actual location at any scale, thats not really how people tend to think about themes and issues when it comes to food. For example, all the stories from the regional south appear to be located in the state of Virginia at the most zoomed out version of the map, however with one click they quickly all disperse to various states like Oklahoma, Georgia, etc. Compare this with someone’s, usually not from the south, understanding of “southern food”. I personally would not know the difference between Carolina barbecue and texas style barbecue.
So faced with this very intriguing map, of food, I began to think about the food maps we created at the beginning of this whole course. The way we tend to think about food starts out as very general: it’s tasty, we associate it with family and friends, and usually can help mark important moments in our lifetimes. The food maps we created helped explain time as well as our involvement and interest in FoodWorks. The food map on the grassroots why hunger page explained food themes across geographic regions. From these two sources it’s easy to tell that food can offer some pretty profound linkages over multiple mediums.
What a satisfying circle you have drawn, Nina–in bringing this collection of stories’ map back to the personal food-maps that everyone drew up in the retreat last April! Not only does it show a new way to shape the whole course, it also is a reminder that stories and maps alike can have an impact more powerful than abstract analysis can generall manage. Best, John
I also enjoyed the map feature. It enables to quickly observe stories from different regions of the US and understand the similarities and shared challenges across the board. This seems as a very useful tool in educational workshops in classroom or youth groups, and I hope to see it incorporated more into these platforms. I agree with Sarah that there are many more stories to capture and I also hope they will be shared in the future!
Nina, I found the map feature to be intriguing too! In fact, I think I preferred it over the Pinterest-like board. We often talk about how food is connected to place, and so I think this is an excellent example of not only how types of foods are unique to a location or region by also how grassroots organizations and stories are rooted to certain parts of the country. It allows you to step back and look at trends in national (as well as international) efforts towards sustainable food systems. While it seems like there are already many “community voices” on the website, after looking at the map, I noticed that some states or parts of the world had more stories than others, and some did not have any at all. It’s crazy to think about the many other stories still out there that are yet to be shared through this medium.