Healthy and Biodiverse Edible Cities Lunch Talk #17: Fruitful Grounds: Co-Creating Edible Spaces from Streets to Countryside

Join us at 1 p.m. (CEST) on June 10th, 2025 for the Healthy and Biodiverse Edible Cities Lunch Talk #17: Fruitful Grounds: Co-Creating Edible Spaces from Streets to Countryside

with Mina Samangooei from Oxford Brookes University and Kai Gildhorn from Terra Concordia.

Registration on Eventbrite

In this webinar, discover how public spaces become thriving, edible landscapes, enriching both the environment and local food systems. We’ll dive into integrative strategies that transform urban and rural spaces into productive, resilient green areas, reconnecting people with place, food, and each other through sustainable land stewardship.

About the Speakers:

Mina Samangooei is an architect and Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University. Mina holds a PhD in Architecture, with research focused on individuals cultivating edible plants on buildings in England, exploring the motivations and barriers. Over the past decade, Mina's work has engaged with sustainable architecture, social equity, and participatory approaches to placemaking, both in the UK and internationally. Mina will introduce the Edible Streets project – a collaborative initiative between the Edible Streets team and Oxfordshire County Council Public Health. The project reimagines streets and public spaces as sites for community food growing, turning underused urban streetscapes into productive, edible landscapes. Through co-design and active involvement of local communities, including vulnerable and underserved groups, Edible Streets aims to strengthen local food systems, improve wellbeing, and foster more inclusive, sustainable neighbourhoods.

Kai Gildhorn is a seafarer and graduate engineer. He has worked for the company ClimatePartner and the Agency for Renewable Resources, a project management organization of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Home Affairs. Kai is founder of Terra Concordia, the company behind mundraub and streugut, and he also deals theoretically and practically with all aspects of tree care. Mundraub.org is a user-driven mapping tool for public orchards, especially in German-speaking countries. Since 2010, more than 100,000 user-generated entries and around 10,000 entries from municipal tree registers have been recorded. This gave rise to wir-sind-essbar.org, a network of cities and municipalities that place a special focus on the planting, care and sustainable use of their fruit trees. In the webinar Kai will introduce the network and its mission to develop and promote a diverse fruit tree culture in cities and municipalities and through expert care to create vibrant, long-lasting and edible landscapes.

Program:

Welcome & Introduction by Ina Säumel (5 min)
Presentation of Edible Streets by Mina Samangooei (10-15 min)
Presentation of Wir sind essbar by Kai Gildhorn (10-15 min)
Questions from the chat and open discussion (25 min)

The webinar will be recorded except for the open discussion.

The event will be conducted in English. However, you are very welcome to provide questions and input in German as well. 

Register now on Eventbrite.