November 13 – Ecologies of Urban Farming and Community – Panel Discussion
York Hall 190 (next to the Theatre @ Glendon)
Our Guests:
Meagan Dellavilla, Aanjiktigaan
Karen Houle, ART + SOIL + COLLECTIVE
Cheyenne Sundance, Sundance Harvest
Nicolas (Nico) Cabal, Glandon College Student and Glendon Community Garden Coordinator
Meagan Dellavilla (she/her) is part of a collective caring for Aanjiktigaan, a garden in Toronto’s west end that serves as a space for people to (re)connect with the land and each other. When she doesn’t have her hands in the soil, she works for a non-profit developing food-focused health promotion programs.
Dr. Karen (Kéké) Houle is a recently retired Philosophy Professor at the University of Guelph. At this point in life Kéké is hellbent on using her acquired social capital + white-skin privilege + a mittful of practical skills, blended with the attitude of “not giving a shit what people [think] anymore,” to create and inspire joyful and artful hyper-local socioecological post-humanist land-based projects.
All of Houle’s 6 projects fall under the umbrella of “The Art of Soil Collective” ART + SOIL + COLLECTIVE (where “collective” does not mean just humans in a bunch, doing human-stuff for humans). Water. Soil. Street-Art. Urban Farming. Worms. Fungi. https://artofsoil.ca/
Cheyenne Sundance is a greens and squash farmer who sells wholesale in Ontario. Cheyenne started Sundance Harvest, an ecological farm in southwestern Ontario in 2019. With a strong interest in incubators, community land trust and cooperative farming she co-founded Sundance Commons, a non-profit that provides the tools, long-term land access, markets, and training for new farmers historically-excluded from the agricultural sector. Sundance Commons provides all these resources at no cost to new farmers and aligns with the spirit of community land trusts. Aside from farming, Cheyenne likes puppet theatre and dancing at discotheques.
Nicolas (Nico) Cabal is an international studies student at Glendon College and most recently a production farmer growing greenhouse tomatoes at Downsview park through Sundance Harvest’s incubator program. He has been the part time coordinator for the Glendon Community Garden since 2021. His obsessions include fruit, picnics with loved ones, and dreaming about agroecological abundance.