The University of Michigan Sustainable Food Program hosted its fourth annual three-day student food summit, Rooting for Change, from March 28 to March 30. About 200 students and community members attended the summit throughout the weekend to learn about local and global sustainable food systems.
Students attended presentations from food, environmental and social justice-oriented organizations on campus, including Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Related Sciences, the Campus Farm and Student Sustainability Coalition.
The first day of the summit consisted of a bite-sized-food-themed show followed by happy hour at the University of Michigan Museum of Art Cafe. The second day of the summit featured a keynote panel in the Michigan League. The panel discussed art and food futures, food promoters who use these ideas to express art and resilience.
The panel consisted of LSA senior Yumna Dagher, LSA senior Mahalina Dimacali and U-M alum Mira Simonton-Chao. Dagher is an artist working with Noon at Night, a sustainable learning collective, to use food as a means to obtain and convey ideas of liberation. Dimacali is a community organizer in the University’s environment and museum studies program. Their research explores the intersections of Queer culture and museum studies, ethnobotany and Indigenous sovereignty. Simonton-Chao is an interdisciplinary artist currently pursuing a Master of Arts in art education at the Art Institute of Chicago. Their work focuses on managing archives, cultivating student agency through the liberal arts and media representation.
The speakers reflected on their experiences utilizing art, academia and food justice work to advance social movements and emphasize ideas of resilience. Two moderators from UMSFP asked the panelists a series of questions about food, art and imagining a better world.
Dimacali began by explaining their current work in two exhibitions, “Rooting Reciprocity” and “Kina n’da-nowendaaganag / All My Relations” and its connection to food justice.
“(Rooting Reciprocity) involved collaboration with eight global indigenous community representatives who submitted writings on plant relatives of their choosing,” Dimacali said. “Alongside their writings, we created life-size installations of them.”
Dimacali said her other exhibition, “Kina n’da-nowendaaganag / All My Relations,” allowed her to express her identity through art.
“This (project) involved many Anishinaabek artists from Michigan who submitted art that represented a relationship with the land,” Dimacali said. “In many ways, I work in the intersections of art and community. If I was to say how these are connected in my mind, I would say that I am lucky to come from a culture that combines all of these for me. My people are from Bataan, Philippines, and art, food, the land, all of these things are part of our identity, so in many ways, that is existence and resilience to me.”
Simonton-Chao explained that their current work focuses on the necessity of food and connection to culture through street papers, which many unhoused people use to make their voices heard.
“I am currently working on work that is less food-centered,” Simonton-Chao said. “Food is a material need and is a constant in everyone’s life. … My current work looks at street papers as a mode of agency and self-representation for low-income and unhoused people. A big component of those narratives has to do with food and art, and how access to that representation is so vital.”
Dagher discussed her current work and how she first became involved in the art world, including her work with Noon at Night and several other artists.
“I am thinking about my work with the art and learning collective, Noon at Night,” Dagher said. “We’re this transgressive learning collective run through Student Life Sustainability using food as a binder for liberation. … I am an artist and a cultural organizer. I love food so much and I love using it as an expressive vehicle for storytelling.”
On the last day of the summit, Rooting For Change hosted student-led presentations with three “learnshop” blocks, with a total of nine different options for the day. About 60 students showed up to learn about topics ranging from mindful eating to growing microgreens.
One of the learnshops, “Music and Creativity in Combating Climate Anxiety,” led by LSA junior Adam Solomon and LSA sophomore Marcus Lopez, explored how joy and creativity through art and nature can help inspire a sustainable lifestyle.
To begin the presentation, Solomon and Lopez played two pieces on the trumpet and keys; one was an improv piece and the second was inspired by fungi. They then asked participants to journal and discuss what brings them joy.
LSA sophomore Lauren May attended the learnshop as part of her work as an LSA Year of Sustainability intern. She told The Michigan Daily that although the presentation was not explicitly related to food, a big part of her joy comes from the memories and moments food creates.
“Adam talked about the role of, ‘What (does) joy mean to you?” May said. “And then how can you make a sustainable lifestyle sustainable, like make it last, not get burnt out, and enjoy it. … Joy kind of splits off into art and nature, and the nature side of it can include human and nonhuman facets of it and cooking with people and sharing food from the earth, also with people you love, is a part of that.”
Another one of the learnshops, “Feeling the Mind, Body, and World: Exploring Mindful Eating and Global Impacts” led by Health Promotion, explored mindful eating and food insecurity around the world. To teach mindfulness, participants were asked to take a cracker and a Life Savers candy and feel, smell, listen and look at the food before tasting it. The presentation then transitioned to a discussion of global food inequality and ways to combat it.
One of the three presenters, LSA freshman Ella Andries, said she hoped the presentation would help people make small changes in their lives to promote more equitable food access.
“We explored the power of mindful eating and gained insight into the global challenges surrounding food, and we hope that we can always take away some knowledge to make conscious choices and work towards a healthier and more equitable world,” Andries said.
LSA senior Sam Barnes, an intern for the Sustainability Food Program, led a session on pickling and fermentation on behalf of Maize and Brine, a new student-led organization aiming to add pickles to the U-M Farm Stand in the fall and educate students about pickling.
In an interview with The Daily, Barnes said she hopes her presentation can give students a way to minimize their own food waste by learning how to pickle.
“I’m hoping that this (presentation) can incorporate a sustainable practice into a lot of students’ lives, where if they see produce starting to go bad, they know they’re not going to be able to utilize it, they can pickle it and then save it for weeks or months in the future,” Barnes said. “So this is really focusing on food waste, and giving them that like lifelong skill of pickling for the future because you can easily take that on to when you get your own apartment or own home later on.”
Barnes said she believes food is a way to connect with others, and she appreciated that this summit highlights how food choices can relate to the environment.
“I’m definitely somebody who loves to eat,” Barnes said. “It’s always been part of my childhood. It’s the way my family connects, sitting down every day and eating dinner together. I was always really interested in how sustainability could be involved in that, whether that’s the way you eat your food, where you buy it from, the types of food you eat. Then even to the end life of it, throwing it away, composting it, pickling it, preserving it.”
Daily Staff Reporters Maddyn Shapiro and Eva Bard can be reached at maddyns@umich.edu and evabard@umich.edu.