Author | Artist | Design
Agricultural sector with creative tools
Author: I aim to share my written words, for record keeping, for enjoyment and for encouragement.
Artist: I love both the practice of art for my own wellness and sharing beautiful things with the people around me.
Food Systems: I aim to help bring idealist thoughts together with feasible project outcomes that result in tangible action in communities.
Facilitation: I love working with people. I tend to bring a [professional] touch of silly with me, for I find everything is accomplished to a higher degree when the people are happy.
Barrett Centre
of Innovation in Sustainable Urban Agricuulture
My Current role of Community Engagement Coordinator, allows me a wide portfolio as part of a small and dedicated team. The Barrett Centre focuses on developing and promoting food production and educational models of urban agriculture while supporting policy change that can help to guide planners to help make space for agriculture in our urban spaces.
Program Development and Delivery
Program development in the context of food, farming, community wellness and personal respite. I have lead the development and delivery of several independent and workshop series.
One campaign I loved working on was the Urban Growers of Tomorrow Program. Here I lead groups through a several weeks of programming helping participants move from planning to seed to harvest!
I recently had the opportunity to teach Dual Credit (College level course to high-school students), it was a wonderful opportunity watching the kids grow in their confidence and learn how to propagate vegetables. For more information about the course check out this article. in Academica’s Top Ten News.
Speaking
I enjoy speaking with and presenting to groups about food systems and agriculture from a variety of perspectives.
I am an enthusiastic and confident speaker, who is able to weave storytelling and appropriate moments of comedic relief throughout, to keep audiences engaged and interested in the topic of learning. In my current role, presentations to external stakeholders is a regular part of my role.
I have also been part of a variety of panels including at the Royal Winter Fair in 2023.
Agriculture
I have spent many years boots on the ground, farming. My love of working outdoors began when I was about 10 years old and I traded work for rides at a local horse barn.
Throughout the years this love of nature, animals and agriculture blossomed into a wide range of odd jobs, as I navigated what different careers in the sector looked and felt like. I worked in horse barns, doing all the jobs you can imagine, from mucking stalls, grooming, riding, training, competing, trimming hooves, doing hay, fixing fences, running camps… the list goes on! Additionally, I have experience working with livestock, including cows, chickens, pigs and goats.
I have spent years working at an assortment of market gardens and farms, holding responsibilities from field planning, CSA and wholesale order tracking and packing, farmers market manager, field work, inventory and warehouse management, driving horses and tractors to accomplish a variety of tasks.
I see the transformative power of food and the power of working on and with the land. I have farmed primarily with colonial influences, and methodologies. In my personal gardens, I strive to follow the lessons I have learned from Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee elders and teachers, while I re-wild and garden the land upon which I currently reside.
Systems and Tracking
I have always loved a good old-fashioned weighted scoring model…. and shockingly used them as a child to make decisions, before I had even heard of excel!
I am skilled at developing and following through with business systems development and key metric tracking.
In my current position, I track a variety of metrics, from food items sold, in person engagements, resources developed and delivered, community feedback etc. I am skilled at compiling, creating visualizations and commentary based on the data available.
Education
I am currently studying at OCAD University, in the Master of Design Program Strategic Foresight and Innovation, with a subject focus on somatic awareness, food systems and accessible public spaces.
At Trent University, I had the pleasure of studying in a multi-disciplinary way. Focusing on sustainable agriculture and food systems and environmental studies and resource management, with a sprinkle of geography, biology, writing, Indigenous studies, and landscape design.
During my time at Trent, I developed my love for natural systems, and my love of the market garden model. Previous to this time, climate change and environmental degradation, felt so large and like an ever present doom.
Understanding the food system, and the possibility for change at the same time having my hands in the dirt growing food, fundamentally changed my way of thinking. This time left me even more in love with agriculture, and hopeful that I will be a positive change maker in my career.
At Durham College, I had the opportunity to complete a post-graduate certificate in Project Management. Wildly different from my other studies and work experience, this program gave me the practical skills to find efficiencies, and practical business tools that will help me to lead the way in whatever position I land in.