Repackaging Artisan Markets

As beautifully displayed fresh food and produce vanish from its basket or table and into the hands of families, home cooks or food enthusiasts, the market has to come to a close. Just like the market, our project has reached its final stage. Our findings have been interpreted and presented to our community partner, peers and faculty members. Our work is done because it is now up to those with the fruitful basket of goods to carry on to create a beautiful dish of success.

Moment of Significance in the Course

What?

As a group, we thought to step out of our comfort zone to survey strangers in different locations was challenging. However, when we had to narrow down what we wanted to present on an infographic, we knew we were presented with a greater challenge. Our presentation was in less than 6 days and we needed to put everything together with a professional infographic because it represented our faculty and community partner. Our moment of significance was the teamwork we had to exercise after being recommended to redo our infographic and from our poster presentation. From surveying, we had an abundance of information but choosing what information to present to our community partner in under 3 minutes seemed challenging. We were met with defeat when our initial infographic draft was given lengthy suggestions by our professor and TA. With an already overwhelming amount of pressure and stress to do well and on top of our continuous course load, we needed one another to help fill in the missing information and redesign the infographic. In the beginning, we all thought we had all the information needed to create an infographic and left the appointed designer in the team to create our infographic. After the backfire from our first infographic, it was no longer a one person job but six brains with 12 creative eyes.

When the presentation day arrived, the amount of uncertainty, stress, and confusion from the beginning of the project vanished as we proudly stood before our printed infographic. However, our teamwork caps couldn’t be hung yet, because we had to explain our findings to our peers, professor, TAs and community partner. We appointed designated speakers to verbally dissect the infographic and draw the audience to experience what we have done in the past three months while the rest of the members were contributing in answering questions from the audience.

So what?

We realized that presenting our findings of what we did in the past 3 months was not easy. As mentioned above, it was not a one-person job because as a group, we had to come together to really narrow down and pinpoint what are our significant findings and how to analyze the data and then be able to present it in a clear way to help our community partner. In our first version of the infographic, we thought that just showcasing our statistics from our survey would be adequate, but through the feedback given, we realized that we need to make sense of our data. During this time of stress, we as group used all our strengths and looked to see what was most beneficial to our community partner. Everyone was actively participating and the importance of our teamwork was not lost on us because each member had a vital role in how the infographic would carry out. All the members had to come together and be on the same page. Our thinking was, how can we present this in a way where everyone, including those who never heard of our project, sees our process clearly.

Other knowledge that we could bring in more of was our problem-solving skills and to realize the purpose of the infographic. Our role was to assist our community partner in reaching their goals and for improvement, so we should realize more of our role in the beginning. Previously we thought we could just throw some data on our infographic, say what we did and that was it. But we needed to present it in a coherent way. Having more of this perspective early on would have been beneficial. If we have realized our roles and the main point of the infographic earlier, then perhaps our first version of the infographic would have been better. Instead of just having the data person and graphic designer work on the infographic, in the beginning, we as a group should have collectively come together and discussed the content and how to showcase it. If we had done this, then perhaps the high-stress situation would not have occurred because we had only 2-3 days to fix our infographic. On the other hand, this emergency situation brought our group closer together and was a team building experience.

Furthermore, in our presentation, we realized that we still need the members. Though our infographic was complete, we couldn’t just rely on 2-3 members to do the presenting, all the members had to be there. The ones who were not presenting, were there to encourage curious onlookers to come over and help to answer questions and give the audience their personal insight and takeaway on the project. Therefore, in every part of our project, we realized that we aren’t just a group of people, but a true team and that we need to rely on each other to effectively carry out our goals.

Figure 1: Group #23’s final infographic on the Artisan Farmers’ Market

Now what?

Now that we have completed the objectives of our CBEL project with the Artisan Farmers’ Market, and produced an infographic presenting our findings, we are looking to see how our work will serve our community partner, Tara. In producing the formal final community project report we hope to provide a comprehensive review of our project that will be of further use to the goal of the assignment. We hope that our findings will lead to the creation of a customer loyalty program and that our customer profile created through surveying helps Tara further understand the consumers that visit the market, and why others may not. With the use of our findings, we would like to see the development of improved marketing techniques that will contribute to the more efficient use of funding and more community members attending the Market.

As a group, we have gained knowledge and skills in teamwork and communication through this project and we hope to take the positive experience to tackle similar projects of this magnitude in the future. We were satisfied with the hands-on experience of surveying and communicating with our community partner as well as learning about the importance of community food security and community-based experiential learning. We hope to employ these experiences in our professional careers and personal lives. Lastly, we look forward to seeing how the Artisan Farmers’ Market will advance in the future, through our teamwork and collaboration with Tara.

Conclusion

We thank Tara, the General Manager of Artisan Farmers’ Market, the Artisan Farmers’ Market Organization and LFS 350 for the opportunity to be apart of this journey to help the Market achieve its goal. We wish the Artisan Farmers’ Market great success in using our data and findings to reach its full potential in the many years to come.

Sincerely,

Jacky, Pilar, Brenda, Nikki, Mahbanou and Phoebe

From a fruity harvest of surveys and a full basket of hatched data, the team is ready to inspect, package and transport what we have learned throughout this project and the course to prepare for the presentation day.

Inches Away from the Big Day

Weekly Objectives and Achievement 

Moment of Significant Change

During our last tutorial session we were asked to work individually, and as a group, to set-up graphs that represented the feelings and emotions, we had experienced since the beginning of the course, and those we expected in the future. The graph consisted of an x-axis, representing the time in weeks, and a y-axis, which represented the different emotions we were experiencing; the emotions were happy, sad and neutral. Once our graphing was complete, it was very interesting to see how each member’s experience differed.

Member reactions about the graphs:

“At the beginning of the semester I was nervous and anxious for our community project. I was afraid that I would not have the skills required for to take forward the community project. However, as the weeks passed I began getting comfortable with collecting data, contacting our community partner and discussing with my group members. I learnt some valuable skills that I will definitely use in the future.” – Nikki

“I experienced an increase in knowledge throughout the semester as I developed skills which I did not previously have such as surveying, data analysis, and working with a community partner. I have also learned the importance of community food security and community-based projects.” – Mahbanou

“I chose this project for the similarity of the commerce projects I have completed. I didn’t necessarily feel a large growth in business skills and knowledge but I definitely enjoyed exercising my proposal writing and communication opportunities. I learned quite a bit about farmers’ markets and the importance of customer preferences and habits for a farmers’ market’s operation.” – Brenda 

“As the semester progressed, my skills gradually increased, as I improved my skills in group work and surveying. Starting the project, there was much uncertainty in terms of how to begin the project, but as the semester progressed, I began to adapt to the uncertainty. Between weeks 4 and 6, my knowledge of survey development and analysis significantly improved, because of feedback from our second meeting with Tara.” – Jacky

“When I first heard that I had been assigned the Artisans Farmers’ Market project I was concerned as I had very little previous knowledge of the market. I was also unsure I possessed the skills necessary to ensure the completion of our goal. However, with the help of my teammates and our community partner, my knowledge and skills have improved significantly throughout the term, and I am now confident in my skills to survey, analyze data, and work in a professional setting.”
-Pilar

We attributed this variation to our different schedules and exam periods, hence, in some weeks some of us were more stressed and anxious for our exams, while others were more relaxed and vice versa. Some of the weeks showed consistencies across all group members. For example, there were weeks where we had received little feedback from Tara, our Community Partner and the Artisan Farmers’ manager, and felt frustrated. However, the whole group was feeling much better when feedback and positive comments were provided, and we could move forward.

During our last tutorial session we also had the chance to graph the knowledge we had gained so far from our experiences inside and outside class time; this time we found our graphs to be quite similar in terms of knowledge and skills gained, with the group as a whole agreeing that as time went by, more knowledge was gained. This was a result of attending more lectures, tutorials and meetings with Tara. Similarly, the skills gained graph showed an increase in skills as time went forward.

We have decided to continue the trend of upward growth for both knowledge and skills and to try and finish off the term with a more positive approach and attitude towards the hardships we may experience. In order to represent the future on our graphs, we have included weeks beyond our LFS 350 tutorials as well as arrows to represent the continuous lines.  We hope to work as a team to get through these last few weeks successfully and finish the semester with a smile.

Our graphs are provided below, check them out!

Figure #1: Each member’s individual skill development progress throughout the weekly objectives of the community project.

Figure #2: Emotions experienced by each member throughout the weekly objectives of the community project.

Figure #3: Each member’s knowledge growth throughout the weekly objectives of the community project.

X-axis Legend

Time (weeks):

1. First general meeting with team members
2. Second meeting for communication, criteria, and blog post
3. Meeting with Tara
4. First blog post
5. Second meeting with Tara
6. Surveying at various locations
7. Second blog post
8. Last meeting with Tara 

-> the arrows refer to each team member’s emotion, skill and knowledge after the completion of the course and how we predict our own abilities to transfer what we learned to our studies or career path development.

Our Strategy For a Graceful Dismount

As the semester comes to an end, we must begin to develop a plan for completing our infographic, as well as our final community project report. We hope for both assignments to be used by the Artisan Farmers’ Market in order to better understand their customer base, how to appeal to potential consumers, and ultimately, help the Market develop a customer loyalty program.

Our strategy for a successful project completion….

Within the next week, our team will be attending a workshop that will guide us in creating an infographic for our project. Our infographic will convey the problem/issue we are trying to solve, why it matters, the approaches we used, our results, and our final take-home message gathered from our research. The process of producing this visual summary of our project will involve analyzing our survey data, which may prove to be a challenge. Specifically, determining how we can use our results to develop a customer profile for the Artisan Farmers’ Market. We will be performing the data analysis as a team following the workshop, and then deciphering the best way to represent it visually. The ultimate goal for this week is to develop an infographic that will disseminate our key-findings and their implications to a diverse audience, in a format that can be easily and quickly understood. On March 26th, we will present our infographic to the public, faculty members, and community partners in the AMS Student Nest.

The findings of our research are to be presented in a final community project report that will be used by the Artisan Farmers’ Market (North and West Vancouver) to tailor their new customer loyalty program. The final report will also be distributed to 145 markets via the BC Association of Farmers’ Markets. Our final report will consist of an analysis of our survey data, which will involve identifying geographic, psychographic, and demographic characteristics of current customers, as well as, potential customers. Once we’ve identified these characteristics, we will use the information to develop customer profiles for marketing and the customer loyalty program. Our goal is to write a report that displays the path that we took to develop customer profiles, so that future students or managers can learn from our process and develop customer profiles of their own. We hope that our report will be useful for Tara, and the Artisan Farmers’ Market, today and in the future.

In order to complete our final report in a timely manner, we will begin by assigning a specific section of the report to each team member. This division of the workload will be discussed and solidified on Monday, March 12th. We will then set up a timeline for when each section should be complete, as it is important that some parts of the report are written before others. This timeline will also include “editing days” where we will look over the work we have completed so far, and provide suggestions to our team members. Throughout the process of writing our final report, we will make sure to incorporate the feedback given to us by Tara, our community partner and Wilson, our TA. We hope that by complying with our schedule our report will be of higher quality, and of more use to our community partner.

The upcoming weeks will certainly prove to be a challenge, especially, with due dates and finals approaching. But, it is important to remember that, “Without a certain amount of anxiety and risk, there’s a limit to how much learning occurs.”, therefore, we will take this time of anxiety and uncertainty to further our learning (Shulman, 2005, p. 18).

References 

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18-25.

Before food can be placed beautifully on a table for sale, there needs to be a farmer(s) providing care, love and observation to its crops. We are like the farmers who are collecting and analyzing data to properly feed the Artisan Farmers’ Market to make it grow and prosper.

Project proposal:  Final Proposal

Overview of Weekly Objectives and Achievement

Identify Upcoming Objectives and Strategies to Achieve Them

After our second meeting with our community partner Tara, we finalized our survey and began setting objectives.

Week 6-7. In-person Surveying

Within the next few weeks, we aim to collect data through surveying in West and North Vancouver. Our plan is to survey near the Lonsdale Artisan Farmers Market at Lonsdale Quay as well as the near the Ambleside Artisan Farmers market on February 25, 2018. But, due to the projection of heavy snowfall during that period, the number of responses that we collect may be insufficient. If this is the case, we will adjust accordingly, and potentially have to set a date to survey in the future. We have also set our next surveying date to be March 3 at the Lonsdale location because the market is holding an event called “Seedy Saturdays” hosted by The Edible Garden Project. Our hope is that on March 3rd we will receive a significant number of responses from individuals that are familiar with the market, in order to better understand the market’s customer base. Our survey questions will allow us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the market.

E.g. Question: “If you do not attend the Artisan Farmers Market, why not?

• This question will help us identify some of the weaknesses of the market, and areas to improve.
• Our current objective is to acquire 100 survey responses across both West Vancouver and North Vancouver. Depending on how successful we are, we may need to schedule additional days for surveying, as well as find different locations to survey in. So far, we have contacted multiple libraries and community centres, but we have had no success in gaining permission to survey on their premises. This means we will need to either contact more organizations or focus on approaching people in public areas, in order to gather the majority of our responses.

Week 8. Facebook & Email Surveying

This week’s objective is to gather data electronically, using Qualtrics as our preferred research software. To achieve our objective, as mentioned, we will use Qualtrics to develop our survey, and to obtain a link that will be posted on the facebook pages of the Ambleside and Lonsdale Artisan Farmers’ Markets. In addition to social media, our Qualtrics survey will also be distributed via the Artisan Farmers Market newsletter.

Here is a rough draft of the post that will accompany the social media survey:

“Students from the University of British Columbia are partnered with the Artisan Farmers’ Market for a project to help the Market better understand its customer base and target market segments. The data collected will inform the Market on potential and existing customer needs and preferences as well as contribute to the development of new and effective marketing strategies. Please take the time to complete the survey, we would truly appreciate it.”

Reflection on a Significant Moment in this Course 

Using  Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model, we can reflect on moments of significance that have occurred in the course so far by addressing three simple questions: What? So what? Now what?

What?

As we began to learn more about the issues faced by the Artisan’ Farmers’ Markets, we knew that it was crucial to its success to identify its customer base and that this would be achieved through conducting a survey. As a group, we were feeling nervous and overwhelmed with the idea of approaching people and asking them to take part in our survey; however, we were determined to reach our goal of collecting 100 survey results. We decided to split up into smaller groups in order to simultaneously target areas in North and West Vancouver, and efficiently collect a variety of responses. In addition, due to the personal deadline we set, we knew that we had to finish collecting the data before our next meeting with our community partner. Overall, it was a positive learning experience; however, it felt discouraging at times when members of the community refused to take part in our data collection.

So what?

After our first day of surveying people, we came to the realization that more experience and preparation is needed to perform the task effectively. Increasingly, we noticed that this is a skill that we have yet to learn in any classroom during our undergraduate degree. In the beginning, we were slightly too optimistic in our ability to collect data, as we expected larger numbers of people to respond. Additionally, due to our lack of experience, we were unsure about what surveying would be like and how members of the community would react to us. In hindsight, we should have put ourselves in their shoes and realized that some people are probably too busy to participate, instead of taking the rejections personally. In order to improve this situation and make it better, we realized that we could have divided up our group in a more strategic way, pairing those who have more experience with those who have less. Overall, this was a great opportunity to gain first-hand experience doing fieldwork and allowing us to apply our own skills and knowledge.

Now what?

As we continue to finish our task of surveying we strive to improve ourselves and to be more knowledgeable of the tasks at hand. In the future, we should be aware of patterns in the responses of our participants and record the situation that occurred when we were rejected. For example, if a person refused to participate in our survey, we should note the reasons, such as them being in a hurry, or if they were busy doing something else. Furthermore, as members in such a diverse group with numerous backgrounds and experiences, we should pay more attention to each member’s unique skills and utilize them in such a way to improve the overall process and outcome our project.

Conclusion

As we are preparing to head into the final week for this community project, we are thankful to have the opportunity to help our community partner raise awareness of the Artisan Farmers’ Market. This project has brought our attention towards the importance of food accessibility and availability and the role Artisan Farmers’ Market provides for the communities in North and West Vancouver. We look forward to presenting our findings and recommendations on Monday, March 26, 2018.

References

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D. and Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.