Land-Based Healing in NYC

DESCRIPTION

This 2-hour session is the first presentation from the New York City Land-Based Healing Project, a community-based participatory research project exploring the meaning of gardening and farming for Black youth, youth of Color, and mentors who steward community farms and gardens across NYC. This inaugural presentation will include a panel discussion, film clip, and overview of research findings from a year-long oral history project.

"Land-based healing is a process of remembering our relationship to land. Land tending reminds us that we belong to our communities, each other, our ancestors, and the Earth itself. Through farming & gardening, we access the physical, emotional, spiritual, and cultural healing potential of nature and connection."   

- NYC Land-Based Healing Project

The NYC Land-Based Healing Project is led by Dr. Anna Ortega-Williams with support from the Academy for Community Behavioral Health and a CUNY Interdisciplinary Research Grant. Each step of this community-centered research has been co-designed and carried out with an intergenerational council of land stewards across NYC’s five boroughs.

Through a year-long oral history project, the community research team explored the meaning of being in relationship with land at NYC farms and gardens among Black youth, youth of Color, and their mentors. Community researchers found that, in the context of historical trauma and persistent racism, NYC farms and gardens contribute to vital experiences of belonging and wellbeing.

This research suggests that NYC farms and gardens offer connections to land and community through which people experience:

1) emotional and physical healing,
2) connection to a higher system of meaning and consciousness,
3) ancestral memory and ancestral healing, and
4) intergenerational learning through farming with elder mentors

 

COURSE OBJECTIVES

Participants will:

• Learn how community-based research enriches community knowledge and voices
• Learn the meaning of farming and land tending among Black youth, youth of Color, and their mentors in NYC, including how leadership by people of Color creates opportunities for belonging and healing
• Identify how farming in these spaces promotes physical and emotional health and wellbeing
• Plan or strengthen your ability to access land in a meaningful way
• Consider implications for your own work

WHAT TO EXPECT

Join a dynamic discussion about land-based healing in NYC. Moderated by Anna Ortega-Williams, PhD, and Vanessa Nisperos, LMSW, this event features a discussion with co-researchers from the NYC Land-Based Healing Stewards Council who will reflect on the meanings of NYC land-based healing, highlight original research findings, guide attendees to explore how these findings may impact your own work, and discuss ways to get involved with your local farm or garden.

Co-researchers joining the November 13 event include:

• Alexx Caceres (East New York Farms!, Brooklyn)
• Edo Mohammed (Convent Garden, Harlem)
• Clarisa James (Garden of Resilience, Queens)
• Jason Boreman (Skyline Community Garden, Staten Island)
• Nancy Ortiz-Surun (La Finca del Sur, Bronx)
• Nando Rodriguez (Frank White Memorial Garden, Brotherhood Sister Sol, Harlem)
• Zonia Ortiz (La Isla Youth Community Garden, Bronx)

This session also features a screening and Q&A with Andrea Ortega-Williams, an award-winning filmmaker and documentarian who will share a segment from her film on La Finca del Sur, a 16-year-old farm with deep cultural roots in the South Bronx.

 

ELIGIBILITY

Academy courses are open to non-profit care providers who deliver social services or behavioral health care in New York City.   

This includes, but is not limited to, staff of: community-based organizations, government agencies, and public hospitals, along with members of mutual aid groups, community gardens, NYCHA resident committees, and more.

We especially invite NYC gardeners, farmers, land stewards, and social service or behavioral health care providers interested in learning how the City’s greenspaces can support community wellbeing. 

This Conversation & Speaker Series event is also open to policy makers and funders interested in how they can support land-based healing in NYC, along with those stewarding or exploring land-based healing approaches in other places.