Credit: NVA

Central Station talk to Angus Farquhar, the man behind NVA, the politically driven public arts organisation who are hosting this weekend’s Glasgow Harvest event which celebrates urban growing.

How did NVA become involved in Glasgow Harvest?

The idea behind the Glasgow Harvest was simply that although Glasgow has a large community growing their own food it often takes place in the secret world of allotments, or in back gardens or balconies and I thought it would be good to bring all that activity out into the open to expand people’s sense of being part of something larger than themselves.

How does the project fit in with NVA’s broader philosophy?

It was a very conscious decision to work with the politics of food production and we got involved with Rolf Roscher (who runs an innovative landscape architecture practice ERZ), in delivering SAGE – Sow and Grow Everywhere, a region wide strategy to encourage the productive re-use and transformation of private and public land to grow food. The Harvest itself, has no audience, you participate by bringing food you have grown within a recipe or a pot of jam, so in this sense everyone has a productive role to play, with the only consumption being the food itself! We have made more and more works which are completed by the creative or physical actions of the public and horticulture is another way to extend and make visible a really vital and necessary part of urban living.

Credit: NVA

NVA takes a collective approach to its projects – tell us a bit more about the other groups you’re working with for Glasgow Harvest.

It’s a great eclectic mix, 20 schools growing tatties in rubble bags to make the best chips they can, (there was a horrific stat a few years ago that in one London primary school less than half a class knew that chips came from potatoes…)

85A have created their wonderfully surreal punk herb caps as an esoteric solution to lack of growing space in the city environment.

Acreative containers competition relies on the imagination of anyone who brings an unusual growing receptacle….all in all I think a village fete on acid, probably sums up our approach!

Central Station also recently did a project for Glasgow Harvest (called ‘twEATs’) – how did this partnership come about?

We were really excited by the way social media tools were used to extend the understanding and ownership of the White Bike Plan that we created for Glasgow International. We set another challenge to CenSta to come up with a lively way of allowing people to share an aspect of food growing or consumption and ‘twEATS’ was born, the booklet of donated recipes and graphic representations that we will give away on the day looks pretty sharp.

What do you think is the most interesting aspect of the use of social media in a creative project such as Glasgow Harvest?

It allows a group of people for whom those tools are a part of their everyday communication systems to explore a personal act (growing or cooking) in a collective context.

What aspect of the Glasgow Harvest project are you most excited about?

The hair clippings from the Herbaceous Barbershop being swept into allotment soup and tasting delicious…

Glasgow Harvest took place on 28 August 2010. Find out how it all went here.

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To find out what Tasty twEATS & Harvest 2010, click here.

In August 2010, Central Station teamed up with NVA, Landshare & River Cottage to bring you a live twitter cook off.

After calling for your grow your own recipe ideas for NVA’s Harvest festival later that month, we then asked designers to put themselves forward to design the a special cookbook/newspaper with all of the recipe ideas. Hilary Grant was our winner and she did a stirling job.

To get everyone’s culinary juices flowing, we had River Cottage’s Head Chef, Tim Maddams, join us over twitter to orchestrate a live cooking event. It rocked. Although not everyone’s meal ended up as tasty as Tim’s, it was a good time had by all.

Below is a more in-depth account of what happened when. Click on the links and re-live the Tasty twEATS!

Central Station are joining up with Landshare and River Cottage to bring you ‘twEATs’ – a live cooking Twitter challenge taking place on the night of 16th August. It’s all for NVA’s Glasgow Harvest, a couple of weeks later at Tramway’s Hidden Gardens on 28th August. If you haven’t read about it yet, it’s a celebration of urban farming aiming to educate and encourage people to grow their own food.

This is our rolling blog, which we update with news, info or just general excitement that we want to share.

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17.08.10

twEATs 2: The Leftovers

The smoke has cleared, the dishes have been collected, there’s a faint tang of lemon and garlic in the air, and all around the country people are looking forward to twEATs 2: The Leftovers – we think it’s fair to say the night was a delicious success.

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12.08.10

Tasty TwEATs Ingredients Revealed

We can now reveal the ingredients for our twEATs event – a live cooking Twitter Challenge- giving you plenty of time to shop and harvest over the weekend.

Have your ingredients ready and be set to start cooking from 7pm!

75g pumpkin seeds
Large bunch of parsley
50g parmesan or matured goat’s cheese, finely grated.
8 courgettes, about 1kg
4 cloves garlic
300ml of rapeseed or extra virgin olive oil
20 basil leaves, cut into strips
Salad leaves for 4
200g crumbly goats cheese
1 lemon
8 thick slices bread
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Hot tip: Have a food processor or blender to hand.

So that’s it. The above will feed 4 lovely friends, if you are cooking for more or less, just adjust to suit. Make sure you follow River Cottage on twitter, and be ready for the cooking instructions to start at 7pm on Monday 16th August. It’s going to be tasty.

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06.08.10

BREAKING NEWS: The chef taking part in twEATs is revealed! We’re incredibly excited to announce that Tim Maddams, Head Chef at River Cottage Axminster Canteen and Deli will be cooking the secret dish on 16th August. Read on…

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twEATs!
You’ve cooked along while watching on telly, you’ve even cooked along to a blog on the net, so now Central Station, Landshare and River Cottage are hosting a live cooking event of our own… on Twitter! To find out the ins and outs, check out our twEATs.

Basically, it looks like this:
- Tim Maddams, Head Chef at River Cottage Axminster Canteen and Deli has selected a dish (vegetarian) from one of their fantastic seasonal recipes for you to cook up.

- Next week the ingredients you will need to cook this mystery recipe will be revealed, giving you a few days to get yourself organised. How you get the ingredients is up to you – you could pick them from your garden, barter with other keen growers for ingredients, visit your local grocer or go out foraging in the wild. What ever floats your boat.

- on the day itself the chef will give step-by-step directions over Twitter  – @rivercottage – on what to do with your ingredients, with the odd picture to keep you on the right track. It’s going to literally be a twitter FEED (see what we did there?)

- you send us your own twEATs and pics as it all happens, letting us know how your culinary skills have held up. And chef will be able to answer any relevant queries as the feed continues. Then we’ll put it all together in an exclusive publication available only at Glasgow Harvest on 28 August.

How can you get involved? We’re glad you asked…

1. Source your ingredients:
In the spirit of NVA and Landshare, we encourage you to find your ingredients locally, if at all possible; perhaps you already have your own windowbox or herb patch, or know of a veggie-growing neighbour who you could trade with. Check out your local farmers’ markets to find a variety of fresh produce, or head out into the countryside yourself, to forage for your food! If you feel inspired to begin growing your own food but don’t have access to a garden, check out Landshare’s programme matching growers with spare land in their area.

2. twEATs aplenty:
This is when you get to eat what you tweet!
Collect together your ingredients and utensils; keep the evening free in your diary, have your computer or phone charged and camera to hand.
Then prepare to cook a dinner you could tweet home about.

3. Go to Harvest:
Pick up a copy of the twEATs’ publication, eat good food, get a punk herb hair-do, check out the jam wall & have a hoot!

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05.08.10
UPDATE: WE HAVE A WINNER!

Central Station is chuffed to announce that Hilary Grant (hilarygrant) is the winner of our twEATs designcompetition.

Here are the winning entries:

POTTED SALAD

and

ICED TEA

Hilary is one half of art collective Edible/Wearable, which she formed with Mahala la May, a fellow student at Duncan of Jordanstone College. Since graduating in 2007, Hilary has designed textiles and accessories for Alexander McQueen, Clare Tough and Tait & Style. She spent the last year working with creative research group Distance Lab and is currently a freelance illustrator and designer.

Angus Farquhar, Creative Director of NVA and one of the judges for our competition said: “I chose Hilary out of a really diverse field with many strong contenders, as I liked her clear and bold style; it is uncomplicated but lively and capable of lifting a simple recipe off the page.”

His fellow judge, Mark Breslin from ISO Design, agreed: “Both of Hilary’s entries have a strong graphic feel, they were really appropriate for the scale and production qualities of the newspaper format. I really liked the contrast between her two entries (yes, two entries – one isn’t enough these days), the first being a sequence of frames illustrating the process, the other a strong single image.”

We can’t wait to see what she does with our limited-edition publication, available only at NVA’s GlasgowHarvest Festival on Sat 28th August.

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NVA:
NVA is a public arts organisation founded in Glasgow in 1992. Our practice is directly engaged in the wider world of urban and rural landscapes. We use a collective approach both in terms of artistic development and also to encourage audiences to participate physically and creatively. We take what is ‘there’ as a starting point to uncover complex underlying realities and to reveal how places shape and are shaped by their inhabitants.

Landshare:
If twEATS and Harvest have got you hankering after the good life, Landshare is the place to find a plot to grow some veggies on. Landshare is an online network where you can look for land to grow veg on, offer their spare land, or get help and tips from Veg Doctors and Helpers supported by Garden Organic, the Royal Horticultural Society and the National Trust.

River Cottage:
Tim Maddams, Head Chef from the River Cottage Axminster Canteen and Deli, will be cooking one of River Cottage’s great seasonal recipes. If you just can’t wait to see what he has chosen, take a peek at some of the fantastic meals in their Everyday Cookbook. Or if you’re passing by, drop in and visit the fantastic new Deli counter at the Axminster Canteen.

It’s a joy to see a building project reach completion and come alive; walking onto the SAGE growing site in Possilpark, the drawings that we have pored over for months have become a reality. There are black growing cubes of various sizes set out neatly on what was previously a derelict patch of ground wedged between St Matthews Church and Allied Vehicles. The surroundings haven’t changed significantly; there’s still concrete under foot and accumulation of rubbish around the perimeter, but during the day we took the next step towards transforming this Concrete Garden into a living, growing place. The day was about planting and bringing the idea of “SAGE (Sow and Grow Everywhere)” alive… ok this isn’t “Everywhere”, but it’s certainly somewhere.

Plug plants have been grown especially for the garden; I ought to surround the term “Plug Plants” with inverted commas because like me, some readers may not be horticulturalists, or even gardeners; excuse me the vulgarity of stealing a description from the interweb of knowledge… “a plug plant is any developing plant whose growth cycle is initiated well in advance of its actual planting”… basically they’re little veg waiting to become big veg.

The site has a cubic aesthetic, and so we planted vegetable plugs in straight lines, squares and rectangles. We do not dare plant in curves for fear of suffering the wrath of the site’s designer, Rolf “The Cube” Roscher. And yet the site’s design suits its urban surrounding well. It might look out of place in open country, but in the city it’s a marriage of urbanism and the natural form. And it will be much easier to work out which plant is which if there is some regularity in their planting.

Later on in the evening we were joined by a gaggle of children and teenagers from the nearby Depot Arts organisation; the younger ones ready to throw themselves into any activity that involved getting dirt on knees and between fingernails; some of the older ones bearing immaculate nails and threatening sickness if their fragile skin comes in contact with manure; we planted potatoes together and the stench was forgotten. I remembered I was fortunate to have had contact with gardening activity as a youngster; admittedly this involved much wonder about why my parents spent SO much time in their beloved back garden rather than riding the flumes at Chessington World of Adventures; but now I really appreciate the context and the love of productive countryside that it has instilled in me. With kids, plugs and cubes, the urban food growing adventure has taken its next step, at least in this small corner of North Glasgow.

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To find out what Tasty twEATS & Harvest 2010, click here.