What?

October 17th, marked arguably the most stressful day of the entire project, as we awaited the results from the city council meeting that was held with our community partner, Sole Food. By late afternoon on the 17th, we were excited upon hearing the good news that Sole Food had obtained the permit to the new location. We were anxious and eager to finally begin the project after planning for a good month and a half. To prepare for the filming portion, we created a storyboard that allowed us to compile ideas on the shots we would like to acquire for the film. The storyboard proved to be handy as it provided us with a platform to record our ideas before they escaped from us. Minor setbacks and issues with the development permit caused a slight delay, but the move officially began on November 8th. We visited the site for our first shoot on November 6th to capture the ‘before’ phase as well as some shots of the preparations in process. Over the next two weeks, our film and audio experts Spencer Cain and Andy Lang Wong, made numerous trips to the old and new farm to capture the ‘during’ phase, in addition to the interviews. The move was finally completed on November 21st, and despite the poor weather, we obtained the last shots we needed for our film.

So What?

The approval of the permit was the climax of our journey thus far. As the objective of our project was to document the first ever relocation of an urban farm, this event became the determining factor as to whether we would have a project to film and present. If things had not gone as planned, we would have needed to start anew and change our focus to documenting how the move had not come to be. We had acknowledged the uncertainty at the beginning of our project and consulted with Matt Johnstone for a back-up plan. Although we had a plan B prepared, we were all rooting and hoping for the approval of the relocation. The approval meant more to us than just having another project to submit for marks. It meant we were able to participate in a project in which its purpose is what captured our interests and stood out from the many other great projects that were offered at the beginning of the term.

The uncertainty does not end here. At the beginning, we were notified that if all goes as planned, the move should commence sometime early to mid-November, and completed at the latest on November 24th, when the lease to their current location terminates. This became a pressing concern as the move would occur near the end of our semester. If the move had lasted until the 24th, we would have had very little time to edit the video, as well as to develop an infographic for the presentation that will occur on November 29th. If the worst was to come, we believed making the deadlines would still be possible, but the quality of the final products may have been compromised. We have discussed this matter with our T.A. as well as our professor, and they were kind enough to allow a later submission. However, despite the leniency of the due date, the timeline remains an issue as our project is pushed back later into the term. November is a hectic month for many of us students, as the end of the semester draws near, so do the many projects and assignments we may have in our other courses. Although the pressure of managing multiple projects and assignments at a time should be no foreign experience for many students, the consequences this time is different in which it affects not only ourselves but our community partner as well.

Now What?

Now that we have acquired all our raw footage and data, all that remains at this point in our journey, is to process our findings to present to the public and bring closure to the project. Editing of the film is already underway, and a draft of our infographic has been completed and submitted to be reviewed for possible improvements. As the deadlines draw near, we used the “divide and conquer” technique to overcome the time constraints while maximizing the quality of our final products. We believe this would be the optimal approach to produce the best results by assigning responsibilities based on each members’ strengths. However, one consequence of using the “divide and conquer” technique is the lack of coherency. Communication here is key to unify all concepts and ideas throughout the three representations that we will be producing.

“Uncertainty”, probably the one word that has come up the most often in this course, has been a prominent theme/emotion we have encountered in this project. Staying positive and embracing uncertainty has been the driving force that pulled us through this far into our journey. Although many of us dislike the slightest of uncertainty in our lives, it is definitely one thing that will always be present. This course and this project has provided us a snapshot at what we may face in our future, whether that may be in our personal lives or in our careers. We must now take what we have learned and continue embracing the uncertainties that has yet to come such as technological issues (knock on wood), and watch as our project come to completion.

    

1. Weekly Objectives and Achievements

Week 5: Oct 16-20 

Objectives: 

-Await results from the city council meeting regarding the lease of the new location 

-Continue building on our storyboard 

-Edit our second blog post based on the feedbacks we received on our first submission 

Achievements: 

-Lease of the new location granted, we then started finalizing our plans for documenting the move 

-Added more detail on our storyboard regarding types of shots we would like to include in our film 

-submitted our revised blog post that included more pictures and clarifications

 

Week 6: Oct 23-27 

Objectives: 

-Start drafting the consent forms for filming and interview purposes 

-Start drafting interview questions 

-Continue building on our storyboard 

Achievements: 

-Consent forms are in the making 

-A shared document was created for group members to compile questions for the interviews 

-More ideas and content were added to the storyboard for our film 

Week 7: Oct 30- Nov 3   

Objectives:  

-Coordinate final dates, for videoing on site, with our community partner (Matt Johnstone)   

-Edit possible interview questions for personnel at Sole Foods  

-Complete consent form for persons intending to be in video and send to our community partner 

-Start on third blog  

Achievements:  

-Assigned first date for videoing to take place at Sole Food farm (Nov 6, 2017), other dates still to be determined 

-Completed list of interview questions for personnel at Sole Foods 

-Completed consent form and sent to community partner  

-Completed the third blog  

 

Week 8: Nov 6-10 

Objectives:  

-Visit Sole Foods and begin filming (Nov 6) 

-Group brainstorm for final project and presentation layout 

-Continue work on story board and intend to complete within 1 week  

Achievements: 

-First round of filming completed at Sole Foods (both videos of farm and interviews obtained)  

-Some ideas presented for the final project and presentation, only a few so far will definitely be implemented, others have yet to be decided on 

-Story board near completion, final editing still required   (INSERT SCREENSHOT FROM STORYBOARD) 

2. Group’s Moment of Significance 

THE GRAPH! 

We decided to plot our emotions (blue), skills (green), and knowledge (red) on a graph that had both positive and negative values to accommodate the wide range of emotions in our group. Points above the x-axis represent positive states and any points below the axis represent the negative states.   

Emotions  

Initially our group’s emotions were high at the start of the school year, but as indicated by the peaks and troughs, stress, assignments, and various personal issues have changed emotional states in the last 9 weeks of school. Although one thing is certain, we are excited to finish the project as well as the school year.   

After grouping all of our graphs onto one piece of paper we realized that all of us share a lot in common with each other. This exercise strengthened our groups understanding of one another and the tough realities we all face on a day-to-day basis. It was interesting to learn why some group members were down in some weeks as we had a chance to discuss and help to address some issues. If anything, this exercise proved the importance that though we are all people and we all are different, together we can overcome any obstacle.  

Skills  

As seen by our graph, the overall trend has been an exponential increase in skills. This has been due to guidance from lectures, our TA Wilson, and our fellow peer’s support. As we have progressed in the course so far, our blogging skills have increased dramatically since the first blog post.  

One crucial skill that our group has demonstrated time and time again has been effective communication. Our main means of communication has been over a Facebook group chat. Participation in the group chat has been great, for example, if we need to meet up and discuss our project or need someone to post his or her work for us there is usually a quick response time. Our communication skills with one another, and our community partner has been one of the most important skills that have developed since the start of the term back in September.  

Knowledge  

Our group’s knowledge has been in flux. Some areas of lecture we had high levels of knowledge and in others we had a negative state because some of us had never been exposed to those ways of knowing. 

Individually, we all have different backgrounds in the Faculty of Land and Food systems. It has been noteworthy, that in all our respective programs, we all have unique and important knowledge that can be applied to our community project, but also the LFS 350 course in general.  Group discussions on weekly readings and the project in general are also beneficial. With so many different perspectives on issues and the complications that arise from them, we have all contributed to our peer’s knowledge and dramatically improved one another’s perspectives as well as ways of knowing. We believe this is reflected in the graph we plotted regarding our overall increase in knowledge. 

3. Our Group’s Strategy for Successful Project Completion 

The Graceful Dismount 

            Our group is currently in week 9 which means we have roughly 25 days until our final project presentation date. With the move of Sole Foods beginning on the 6th of November and tentatively concluding on the 17th of November, this gives us roughly 1.5 weeks after the move to compile our footage to complete the video, and create our presentation and poster. 

            To complete the video, we must take all of our footage from before, during, and after the move and perform editing on it. The editing will be done mostly by Andy. Once the initial editing has been completed we will consult Matt Johnstone with our first draft and then edit accordingly. Once our video is completed, we will present it to the Sole Food Street Farm community and reflect upon their feedback presented to us. Our final interaction with Matt and Sole Foods will be a final one-on-one interview with Matt to reflect upon how we did, how he feels the project went, and what could’ve been improved on in the process. 

            To create our poster and final presentation, we will reference our video and reflect upon the entire process undergone throughout the semester. We will be using a PowerPoint presentation to develop the poster, and will use the printing services available on UBC campus. We will present the poster in a format resembling a scientific paper: introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion. When we present our poster at the AMS Student nest on the 29th of November, we will be presenting our poster along with the video that we created displaying the move of Sole Foods, playing on loop so spectators can see the process of the move in full swing while hearing from the employees of Sole Foods. 

            Following these steps, we will successfully and gracefully dismount from our community-based experiential learning project with Sole Foods. Our goals in concluding the project are to have an understanding and seamless representation of how to move an urban farm within a bustling metropolis; and to have a clear, concise poster to present to interested peers at the University of British Columbia on the process of moving an Urban Street Farm.