Changemakers Day at Slow Food Nation

March 20, 2008
Anya Fernald, Slow Food Nation

The agenda for the first-ever Slow Food Nation event is being built this spring with help from farmers, fishers, non-profit leaders, social venture businesses and more. All aspects of Slow Food Nation will represent the mission of the Slow Food movement: building a food system that is good, clean, and fair. Good means the food is fresh, nutritious, delicious and culturally appropriate. Clean means that the resources from which it is produced and the bodies into which is goes will not be polluted because of the way it was produced. Fair means that low-income people, farm workers, and farm owners large and small are all equitably sharing in the bounty that the food provides. These are all values and principles that I know my colleagues from the 2007 ROC Planning Fellows program share and promote in their important work. I hope they- and you- will participate in Slow Food Nation in two ways.

The first is by signing up as a Changemaker, those leading the effort to transform the food system. On the Civic Center Plaza, Slow Food Nation will begin with Changemakers Day, a special one-day event, Friday, August 29th. Roots of Change is a primary sponsor of the day and is collaborating with Slow Food to pursue our common goal of more closely integrating the work of Slow Food and other food system activists that share common cause. There will be up to 20 individual sessions designed to spawn increased collaboration. We seek at least 300 participants. In addition to some special late afternoon events dedicated to Immigration, School Food, and a Farm Bill for the 21st Century, the exciting aspect of the day is that participants – that means you – are designing the sessions. From political theater to hearty debate, Roots of Change and Slow Food are currently collecting proposals from both their networks. Please submit yours before the April 7th deadline. There are also opportunities to pair your NGO with a Bay Area restaurant for one of the many special Slow Food dinner/fundraisers that will be held during the event. To learn more about how to participate in a dinner, Changemakers Day, or to obtain the PDF to propose a panel for one of the four themes, click here.

The second way to participate is as a full participant in the main event. I hope you will be one of the 60,000 people from across the land and globe that will attend the two venues and multiple taste activities over four days to experience Slow Food’s way of helping the United States transform our fast food nation into a slow food nation in one generation.

Getting people through the door to eat and drink is the easy part; the hard part is making that individual interaction lead to change in how a person perceives food and agriculture, and how they use their own purchasing and political power to be “good, clean, and fair”. Slow Food Nation will use storytelling as a primary educational tool. Each element of the event will tell a different story, stories of seed saving, of indigenous traditions, of a family recipe that became a regional specialty, or of a microclimate that shapes the production of a particular crop.

These stories will be communicated in different physical spaces. The Victory Garden – a vegetable farm at the heart of the city that will be the centerpiece of the event – will tell a story via signage, docents, and products about the need to link urban and rural communities to build national food security and information about the Bay Area’s urban farms, which must become more integral to every urban center. The Cheese pavilion in the Fort Mason Taste halls will tell a story of micro flora, biodiversity, and cheese making traditions brought to California by Portuguese and Italian immigrants. The Explore area at Fort Mason will tell the story of how corn and sorghum are grown, processed, and cooked, and the role their cultivation has played in the development of the Americas. The Wine pavilion may feature the largest collection of American wines ever presented in one place, explore the concept of American terrior, and feature the many methods by which wine producers are working to become fully sustainable. Through these stories, Slow Food Nation will deliver a transformative experience that will lead participants to a greater understanding of the role of food choices in environmental wellness, social justice and sustainability.

I hope to see many of you in San Francisco from August 29 through September 1st. Ciao!

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