Foodprints

CPAR Foodprints

CPAR’s traveling exhibit, Foodprints: Edible Environments, Sustainable Gardens takes visitors on a journey illustrating the ways that African farmers are building resilience against climate change, providing healthy food for families and creating income for a sustainable future.

Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief (CPAR) has teamed up with the Ontario College of Art & Design’s (OCAD) Frogpond faculty and student design team to launch Foodprints: Edible Environments, Sustainable Gardens. The exhibit launched in Toronto in March 2010 as a feature garden exhibit at Canada Blooms – Canada’s largest flower and garden festival.

Foodprints draws inspiration from African farmers’ own designs of edible gardens to generate sources of income, nutritious food for their families, and soil and water conservation measures that help small-scale farmers remain resilient in the face of challenges such as climate change and HIV and AIDS.

The mobile exhibit challenges visitors to examine the connections between the global and the local, and to discover what’s happening in ‘our own backyards’ related to global sustainable food movements. With the growing interest among Canadians in local activities surrounding sustainable food (ie. community gardens, food sovereignty, locally sourced and organic food) one of the important ‘lessons from the field’ promoted by the exhibit is that healthy food grows healthy communities – no matter where one lives.

Creatively employing salvaged and recycled materials found at renovation sites throughout the city, and with an eye to a reusable and natural aesthetic for the exhibit, CPAR and OCAD Frogpond together have generated a living, colourful and thought-provoking installation that attracted a high level of interest at the 2010 Canada Blooms festival.

CPAR Foodprints Sketch

An early concept design of CPAR’s Foodprints exhibit, from the OCAD Frogpond team


CPAR’s Foodprints exhibit will be ‘going mobile’ beginning in Spring 2010, with plans to land at festivals, farmers markets and a variety of events and venues with ties to issues of sustainability and local-global food security connections.  Stay tuned by keeping an eye on our blog and signing up for email updates on the Get Involved page!