Work Package 2
Food Policies and Practices Identification. Knowledge Community.
Overview
In the four years of the FUSILLI project, the VU University Amsterdam team is working towards establishing an international knowledge community on the cities’ transitions towards sustainable, just and healthy food systems. Working closely with and learning from the 12 cities participating in the FUSILLI project, we aim to uncover the most pressing challenges and questions. Firstly, this helps to identify and investigate examples of urban food system strategies, policies, and actions that best connect to cities’ learning needs. Secondly, through interviews and workshops, we facilitate a reflexive learning process for the FUSILLI cities.
To further connect food actors’ questions and answers, an online knowledge platform will be established with an international outreach. This platform connects a worldwide community, shares and disseminates knowledge acquired throughout the FUSILLI project duration through various tools and instruments, including visualisations, fact-sheets and videos, but also training on ‘systems thinking for cities’, forums, webinars, online inter-vision meetings on a specific learning question, and eye-opener workshops. Tools will be implemented and adjusted based on the needs of the cities to ensure optimal knowledge sharing and capacity building.
Tasks
Our main tasks connect to our role as researchers interested in the reflexive learning processes of the FUSILLI cities. Aside from doing desk research, qualitative interviews and creative workshops are central to our methodology, using a wide variety of techniques such as learning histories, timeline interviews, and workshops. In a variety of ways, we are both concerned with the continuous learning process of cities, as well as how to foster knowledge exchange. Leading a core working group of six other FUSILLI partners, we co-investigate practices and policies of sustainable urban food system transformation. This results in a database of showcases, forming the basis of exemplary ‘best practices’ that feed into the online knowledge platform. Moreover, we are jointly working to establish the international knowledge community on urban food system transitions.
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Barbara Regeer
b.j.regeer@vu.nl
+31 20 59 87031