Co-Designing Year-Round Closed-Loop Urban Gardening: Community Knowledge Mapping & Foundations
Background:
Urban gardening provides significant social, cultural, and economic benefits to communities across Canada. However, Calgary's short outdoor growing season limits the potential of urban agriculture to address food insecurity and meet diverse nutritional needs year-round. As cities face growing challenges related to food access, climate adaptation, and community resilience, there is an urgent need for innovative, community-driven solutions that extend growing seasons while remaining affordable and culturally relevant. This workshop is a first step in exploring how a community-engaged, year-round urban gardening system can be co-designed to create net-zero and passive solutions that address food insecurity and support diverse social, environmental, and nutritional needs.
Event Overview:
This first workshop brings together members of various multicultural community gardening groups in Calgary to share knowledge, experiences, and ideas about year-round urban gardening. The session will begin with introductions, followed by facilitated small group discussions where participants are invited to reflect on why they garden, what they enjoy, and what barriers they face. These conversations will set the stage for exploring a proposed year-round growing solution together. Participants will then engage in group discussions about cultural food expectations, gardening practices, and experiences with seasonal limitations and food access.
Following a short break, the conveners will present a proposed closed-loop year-round urban growing system and invite participants to share their thoughts: Does it solve your problems? What barriers do you see? What possibilities does it open? Groups will then discuss the feasibility of the proposed solution in their own context before coming together for a full-group report-back session. These activities will explore modular system components such as cold frames, passive heat retention, composting, protein production systems, and supplemental lighting. Visual tools and facilitated small-group discussions will ensure accessibility and inclusive participation throughout the session.
Objectives:
This workshop seeks to establish a strong foundation for collaborative co-design of a closed-loop year-round urban gardening systems. Specific goals include:
Building trust and establishing relationships among diverse community gardening groups and research partners.
Gathering community knowledge about cultural food expectations, existing gardening practices, and experiences with seasonal limitations and food access challenges.
Identifying community priorities, aspirations, and success indicators for year-round urban gardening systems from participants' perspectives.
Co-exploring preliminary design concepts for modular agroecological systems, including passive heating, composting, and protein production components.
Creating a shared understanding of what "success" means across different cultural and community contexts (e.g., affordability, cultural relevance, ease of maintenance, nutritional outcomes, social connection).
Insights from this workshop will inform the co-design process and contribute to learning for a second workshop which will focus on knowledge sharing and prototype refining with the aim of implementing pilot projects in select community gardens across Calgary. Findings will be documented transparently and shared with all participants.
Tentative Agenda:
Time
Activity
Description
9:30am - 9:45am (15 mins)
Welcome & Introductions
Welcome and community introductions. Overview of project goals and workshop format.
9:45am - 10:30am (45 mins)
Small Group Discussions
Facilitated small group discussions on gardening experiences and interests.
10:30am - 10:45am (15 mins)
Break
10:45am - 11:15am (30 mins)
Presentation: Proposed Closed-Loop Growing System
The research team presents the proposed year-round closed-loop urban growing system. Participants are invited to consider pros, cons, and gaps.
11:15am - 12:00pm (45 mins)
Group Discussions: Feasibility & Possibilities
Groups return to their tables to discuss: What does this solution solve in my context? What is feasible? What other solutions can you envision?
12:00pm - 12:30pm (30 mins)
Lunch
Report-Back Session
Each table shares highlights from their discussions with the full group.
12:30pm
Close
Closing remarks.
Event Contacts:
Jenny Godley, PhD
Associate Dean, Transdisciplinary Scholarship
Faculty of Graduate Studies
University of Calgary
Email: [email protected]
Amir Bahman Radnejad, PhD.
Chair of Innovation & Marketing Department
Mount Royal University
Email: [email protected]
Atinuke Chineme, PhD.
Research Assistant
Haskayne School of Business
University of Calgary
Email: [email protected]
This workshop aligns with the City of Calgary's Food Resilience Strategy.
Note: This is the first of two community-based workshops designed to co-design a prototype modular agroecological system for year-round urban gardening in Calgary. Workshop insights will inform pilot projects planned for four community gardens and contribute to a larger collaborative grant application.