Glasgow Harvest 2010

Hidden Gardens, Glasgow

28th August 2010

GLASGOW HARVEST
A Celebration of Urban Farming

On Saturday the 28th August 2010, over a thousand people came to NVA’s first Glasgow Harvest at The Hidden Gardens, a celebration of social gardening and Glasgow’s biggest open air home-grown meal.

Everyone came with food, jam and creative containers and devoured the pakora on the Sharing Tables. 52 jars of jam were added to the glorious Jam Wall and shreds were torn off the homemade Sourdough bread. Batch upon batch of allotment grown soup was sampled, herby hair cuts were given by the 85A barbers and a lady built entirely from fruit and veg was marvelled at.

“There were so many good points during the day, I like the fact that even with some stunning allotment and homemade dishes on offer throughout the day, the biggest spontaneous queue was for the dinner ladies doing extra chips between the double rubble schools competitions!

My other memory is the mixed expressions of horror and happiness on the small kids on the barber’s chair being mercilessly spun around and played with by the maverick 85A crew before their herb headpieces were hacked off with giant scissors… “ (Angus Farquhar, NVA Creative Director)

The first ever Glasgow Harvest was a truly uplifting day. We have had such great feedback from you all and want to give a warm thank you to all that came and who were involved. From the dinner ladies who helped out with the Double Rubble Chip Challenge, to the allotmenteers who made sure there was always some tasty soup warming on the hob for us to sip, to all the people who came on the day bearing home made gifts.

“Thank you for such an amazing day - felt totally inspired and uplifted, and also a great reminder of why i love Glasgow so much” (Jolene Crawford, Harvest participant)

Harvest Highlights

There were so many different ways for people to get involved with Harvest 2010, these are just a few of the highlights both on the day and during the run up…

Share & Dine

Everyone who came along on the day were encouraged to bring a home made vegetarian dish which included at least one ingredient grown to harvest to share with fellow growers. We provided five Share and Dine stalls complete with receptacles – and you brought the food to fill them! We had an impressive feast with everything from frittatas, pakora, chutneys and homemade breads.

The Creative Container Challenge

Original and unique growing containers were entered into our Creative Container Challenge to win a cash prize. The challenge was to grow something in an unusual object, or grow something in a unique plant pot you had decorated yourself. Up to 40 distinctive entries were brought along on the day. The containers varied from teapots, to toasters to lawnmower heads. The entries were judged by the public on the day and resulted in 3 lucky winners whom all received a prize of £50 each.

The Jam Wall

Throughout the day people brought in their homemade preserves to add to the spectacular Harvest Jam Wall. The wall was a communally created sculptural installation based on the concept of an edible 3D pantone colour chart or paint colour chart… (see an example of a traditiional panone chart HERE).

Not all the Jam makers necessarily grew their own fruit, and not all fruit growers were jam makers, so NVA set up the ‘Jam Dating Agency’ discussion on our Facebook page HERE where you could post up if you had spare fruit from your harvest to donate or similarly were hoping to find some spare fruit to make your home made jam with. Our Dating Agency worked really well and 52 different kinds of homemade Jam were added to the Wall on the day to beautiful effect.

Grow Your Own

We gave away 100 chard, courgette and potato plants this summer. In return, our growers took pictures of their plants as they grew and uploaded them to our Grow Your Own Flickr album HERE.

The Great Scottish Double Rubble Chip Challenge

The Double Rubble Chip Challenge ran concurrently with Glasgow Harvest and was a great new project that provided 27 schools with materials and support to grow their own potatoes. 18 of the schools brought the potatoes they had grown to Glasgow Harvest where they were made into chips for all to enjoy.

Over 90 pupils from each of the schools helped our wonderful dinner ladies to prepare and cook their own chips. The chips were free to be tried by all who attended Harvest but there was a lucky panel of judges selected from the audience who blind tasted every batch. They selected our 5 winners who were:

Holy Cross Primary School
Wester Common Primary
Knightswood Primary
Hyndland Secondary
St Charles Language Unit

The winners all received a cheque of £100 to spend on their School environment.

Co-Create

In the run up to Harvest, NVA also collaborated with Central Station / Iso in a pilot project called Co-Create which was using GLOW, the world’s first national intranet for education. The project involved a series of artist-delivered workshops in schools around horticultural themes and social action.

A number of pupils who participated in the Co-Create ‘Potato Heads’ project, attended the Harvest and took part in the Double Rubble Chip Challenge. The ‘Potato Heads’ were a green activist group who grew their own veg and engaged other pupils into thinking how they could lead social change toward a more green and sustainable future. The project culminated in the ‘Tattie Times’ newspaper which was used to wrap all the pokes of chips served up at Harvest.

Further Information

Participation
‘Like’ our Facebook page and see the discussions and during the run up to and after Harvest www.facebook.com/NVAprojects

Image Share
Go to our Flickr page and see what people were growing in the run up to Harvest and their own pictures from the day.
www.flickr.com/groups/harvest_gyo

Glasgow Harvest is part of SAGE (Sow and Grow Everywhere)

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