Letter of Intention

Strategic Foresight and Innovation Masters Program OCAD U

Part Time Beginning September 2024

Written by Jennifer Hoban

 August 2023

Land Acknowledgement

The Township of Uxbridge, where I live, is situated on the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Anishinaabe people. I acknowledge that these lands are covered under the Williams Treaties and are home to many Indigenous communities. I honour, recognize, and respect these nations and Indigenous Peoples as the traditional stewards of the lands and waters on which we now live, work, write and create.

Personal reimagining of agriculture

In September 2022, I found myself in a place of having to start anew. I chose to stop working as a farm hand and return to school, studying project management and business. Part of the world I had been actively avoiding to this point.  Concurrently, I began working within the agriculture sector from an institutional position as the Student Ambassador and Engagement Co-ordinator within the Barrett Center of Innovation in Sustainable Urban Agriculture (The Barrett Centre). 

No longer was I hocking vegetables at market or working long days in the field, but I was inside at a desk, and yet within this alternate modality of communication, I have been able to remain closely tied to the world of food and agriculture, now through a lens of engagement and possibilities.

Urban planning, policy and food sovereignty. 

The benefits of Urban Agriculture (UA) within society are well studied.  The research is clear, UA can provide meaningful ecosystem services such as carbon reduction, water capture and management, increase in biodiversity, biomass production (for energy production) and of course the obvious, food production[1]; these services are clearly a force for good within our urban spaces.

More interestingly, UA also has a unique ability to provide critical cultural services such as community cohesion, increased food literacy, improved physical and mental health, meaningful job creation and more aesthetically pleasing neighbourhoods1.   

One of the Barrett Centre’s partners is Community Care Durham, where we work together to host a subsidized mobile food market each Wednesday June – October, at the Ajax Community Centre.  Many of the people I talk to at this market, discuss the struggles around obtaining fresh and healthy food.

I have seen how folks count their coins, to determine how many apples, potatoes or beets they can buy for the week.  I have heard firsthand, that these people struggle to make it out of the urban centre to obtain fresh food.  From the location of our pop-up market, next to several apartment buildings and senior residences, the closest grocery store is over 12 km away.  For people with no car and mobility struggles, it is not an easy journey.  I want to help influence and design urban spaces for the people who I have come to know through my role at the Barrett Centre, and for the people whom I know personally. 

In my work this summer, I have had well over a hundred of conversation with folks about urban agriculture and food.  When speaking with the community, I heard echoes of what I read within the wider body of literature.   People identified that they want to interact within the agricultural space the Barrett Centre will soon be providing, to access to fresh, healthy food and community connection.

I recently came across the job title, food systems planner.  Hearing this definitive description of the work I hope to do, piqued my interest and excitement[2]. I want the opportunity to continually research and experiment with how urban food systems planning can address food sovereignty for individuals, communities and nations. Food is one of the most critical resources, that we as humans literally cannot live without. I believe that we need to reevaluate the separation we have created between ourselves and the food that we consume. 

In most municipal, regional and commercial urban spaces, there are budgets in place for landscaping and grass cutting.  I want to see those budgets more appropriately allocated, and I want to help facilitate conversations and engagements with the people who have the power and finances to re-write the policies.   

In my studies I want to explore so many different questions….How I can facilitate conversations, thought experiments, actions, and policies that are designed with compassion? How can I think and communicate in such a way that I am able to influence others to also think creatively?  How can we shift the values of our society from the one to the many – from concrete jungles and urban sprawl to healthy, vibrant, alive communities.

In March of 2024, I will be participating in the Barrett Centre’s Urban Agriculture Conference: Exploring the Power of Social Innovation, where farmers, teachers, students, community leaders, researchers, economic developers, policy makers and innovators, will be coming together, to discuss the question “How can we make space for Urban Agriculture through the power of social innovation?” I hope that from the ideas generated at that conference, a project idea will emerge. 

Movement and Awareness

In addition to agriculture, movement has become a very important form of communication for me in my personal life. I have experienced three brief moments of study. I experienced Amerta movement practice at the Dharma Centre of Canada with Terry Hagan and Mala Sikka. I stumbled into an equine assisted somatic movement workshop with Paula Josa-Jones.  I have experienced somatic movement with Connie Frey, Phd, in a therapeutic setting. I have not formally studied any of these practices, but I can feel the weight of their power. 

I have a deep feeling and hunch that bringing movement and awareness into the rooms where decisions are being made, will bring positive change and help with the reimagination and compassionate redevelopment of our urban spaces. 

The creative and movement aspects of my curiosity is a large part of why I’m excited about the possibility of engaging with the OCAD SFI program rather than other degrees such as MBA programs.  I am curious how we can allow playful, creative and honest movement and presence to influence the place from which we speak and act. 

“As we become more present, it will impact everything around us” Paula Josa Jones

Final Thoughts

I hope to learn and develop methods of facilitation, in such a way that the radical ideas and reimagining can be held within the safety of groups.  I want to help bring idealist thoughts together with feasible project outcomes that result in tangible action in our communities. 

I intend to be part of the current, pushing our collective spaces to re-prioritize compassion for the people and the land, while developing food sovereignty at the personal, community, regional, national and global levels.

I believe that I will need help from an art teacher, a dance teacher, a facilitation teacher along with the other faculty who are apart of the program to help me learn about designing systems and implementing business strategies.  I believe that will need a creative space, where I feel at ease and supported by other creative people as I develop my skills. 

Now you know my intention and where I come from, to learn more about my personal positionality, please reference the forward of Urban Agriculture: Let’s Take a Look! Found on the Barrett Centre Urban Agriculture Community Portal.

If you believe that this program can help me on my journey, please consider my application. 

With Gratitude,

Jennifer Hoban

[1] Newell, J.P., et al. 2022. Ecosystem services of Urban Agriculture and Prospects for scaling up production: A study of Detroit. Cities 125. 103664.

[2] Soma, T., et al. 2022. Food assets for whom? Community Perspectives on food asset mapping in Canada.  Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 15:3, 322-339.