SHARECITY Research Project is officially launching!

Published by SHARECITY on the 19th May 2016.

Assessing the sustainability of city-based food sharing: SHARECITY Research Project is officially launching!

SHARECITY, a new research project based at Trinity College Dublin, is using an innovative and collaborative approach to assess the practice and sustainability potential of city-based food sharing economies. Funded by the European Research Council, SHARECITY brings together an international team of researchers as well as an advisory panel of global experts committed to exploring novel pathways for more sustainable food futures.

Professor Anna Davies, Principal Investigator of SHARECITY says:

“More and more people are living in urban areas and this trend is set to continue. In order to meet the needs of urban dwellers now and in the future we must examine the potential of niche activities, such as ICT-enabled food sharing, to ensure our urban food systems are sustainable. SHARECITY is the first global research effort to identify, classify and evaluate the practice and potential of city-based food sharing.”

Food sharing forms one strand of the increasingly internet-mediated ‘sharing’ or ‘collaborative economy’. SHARECITY, which runs until 2020, will firstly identify 100 global cities in which food sharing plays an active and transformative role in advancing urban sustainability through resource conservation, food waste reduction and the building of communities. In depth ethnographies will then be conducted in seven of these cities. By specifically looking at how ICT (Internet and Communications Technologies) is enabling these activities through mobile apps and social media (termed ‘ifood sharing’) the team will be addressing questions such as:

How does ifood-sharing differ from historical practices?
What does the global landscape of ifood-sharing look like today?
What role might ifood-sharing play in supporting any transformation towards a more sustainable society in an era of planetary urbanisation?

The SHARECITY launch event will take place on May 26^th in Dublin and will offer an opportunity to meet and learn more about a variety of Dublin-based food sharing activities. Dublin based community groups and sharing organisations WeShare Dublin, The Heritage Community Garden, The DCU Community Garden, Newmarket Kitchen and Dublin Community Growers will be presenting a snapshot of their activities.

If you are interested in attending the Launch Event please register here.

Event details:

26th May 2016

6-8pm

Fumbally Stables

Clanbrassil Street, Dublin 8

Special Guests

WeShare Dublin

WeShare is a Gift Economy community group sharing skills, knowledge, stuff & time, in a money-free environment.

The Heritage Community Garden

The Heritage Community garden is a Donnybrook-based hub of cooperative community empowerment rooted in growing organic food.

The DCU Community Garden

The DCU Community garden is open to all staff, students and DCU alumni along with member and organisations from our local community for utilisation as a resource for teaching, research, education, training and community engagement.

Newmarket Kitchen

Newmarket Kitchen is a shared commercial kitchen space designed for food start-ups, caterers and independent chefs. The space offers open plan sharing for people to get out of their kitchen and plug in to a dynamic, collaborative community.

Dublin Community Growers

Dublin Community Growers is a network of community gardeners who meet monthly within central Dublin. An open group, they meet to discuss community gardening projects, and the issues faced by these projects.

This event is possible because of support from:

The European Research Council

The ERC’s mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence. The ERC complements other funding activities in Europe such as those of the national research funding agencies, and is a flagship component of Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Research Framework Programme for 2014 to 2020.

Being ‘investigator-driven’, or ‘bottom-up’, in nature, the ERC approach allows researchers to identify new opportunities and directions in any field of research, rather than being led by priorities set by politicians. This ensures that funds are channelled into new and promising areas of research with a greater degree of flexibility.

School of Geography, Trinity College Dublin

Geography at Trinity College Dublin is a place of intensive and extensive geographical scholarship in Ireland. They teach and research across the discipline from Nigeria to New Zealand, from development theory to coastal modelling, and from climate change to the social economy. They aim to challenge students intellectually and foster and maintain world class research and teaching in a supportive and collegial atmosphere. Geography is an integrative subject with an international outlook and openness to interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Fumbally Stables

The Fumbally Stables is a sister to the Fumbally Café. It is a place where food, culture and education come together and where experimentation, fermentation, workshops and events happen. A large portion of this is focused on how we can be better at what we do, and inevitably that comes down to being more conscious about issues such as food waste and environmental impact.

WineLab

Wine-Lab ships wine in single use, lightweight recyclable kegs. Due to the reduction in weight and size they can ship twice as much wine on a single pallet. These efficiencies mean less pallets in transit so less trucks on the road. In 2016 they will take over 460 tonnes of glass out of circulation in Ireland. The kegs keep wine fresh for over 60 days once tapped, meaning a complete eradication of waste from spoilage or oxidation.