Taste Sound View

Food as a catalyst for engagement

Soundview, Bronx, NY

Project Partners: Siri Betts-Sonstegard, Nelson Lo,  Jie Wang, and the Friends of Soundview Park

 

 

This project aimed to amplify the involvement of the local Soundview community in the stewardship of their waterfront and to provide the local organization with tools that can be used to transform Soundview Park into a platform for community engagement. Built around the idea of a potluck, Taste Sound View was designed as an event that leveraged a social gathering around food as a catalyst to ignite community conversation towards aligning interests, facilitating social networks, and revealing local resources. The toolkit we developed will empower the Friends of Soundview Park with the means to initiate scalable opportunities for community intervention while inspiring projects that create and sustain positive social change.

 

Throughout the event itself, common interests were unearthed and connections grew organically.  The platform we created worked well to promote community-based ideas and inspire further action.  In the Spring of 2014, The Butterfly Garden, one of the projects generated through our first potluck, received funding and successfully broke ground.