latest news & announcements

Scott Davis, RECOMS fellow started his blog early this year on his research. In his words, the blog is "about local environments and spaces, which are changing at pace, therefore how communities’ feel attached to, and responsible for adjusting their places, is also constantly evolving. At a governance level, there is a social policy drive for “stronger communities” often under the banner of community resilience. Governments are requesting communities to participate more in society and therefore become more ‘’resilient’’ through taking responsibility for their local environments.

RECOMS 2nd Training Event called an action learning trainining project on agroecology and food sovereignty took place in Coventry between 1-8 February lead by RECOMS partner, Shared Assets, and continued in Brussels where the fellows had the opportunity to present their current research status to the European Commission. During the two weeks, the focus was on developing a project in smaller groups in three various topics relevant for Coventry and agroecology.

Citizen-led Food Policy Councils (FPCs, called an Ernährungsratin Germany) have been long-standing in the United States and Canada.  But, in recent years Europe has seen an increasing emergence of food initiatives seeking transformative political change in the food system and beyond.  Stephen recently traveled to Berlin, Germany for a meeting of the Berlin Food Policy Council (BFPC) to begin exploring the political dimensions of citizen-led food initiatives.

The whole RECOMS group gathered for the first time between 16th and 21st September in Vaasa, Finland to have its first training event about photography as well as resilience, resourcefulness and vulnerability. The fifteen fellows and their mentors as well as RECOMS partners gathered to have discussions about resourcefulness and resilience and to listen to presentations on positionality, vulnerability and photography.