UMD Land Lab is hosting Soul Food Monologues on Monday, August 28 at 7 p.m. at Teatro Zuccone, 222 East Superior Street. This is a free event that’s open to the public.
Soul Food Monologues is a collective performance of stories about food and justice.
“It features UMD students and Duluth community members sharing their relationship to food’s tangled history in our community,” says Randy Hanson, director of the UMD Land Lab.
“We hope the performance contributes to changing the way people view the food system– moving into thinking of it as a social tool that can be used to make us both a healthier and more cohesive community.”
Performers
Rawia Maamoun (UMD student, Business/Economics)
Jane Marynik (UMD student, Biology)
Megan Forcia (UMD student, American Indian Studies)
Sarah Garramore (Lutheran Social Services Senior Corp)
Stephen Lorber (Community Action Duluth, Seeds of Success)
Aimee Foster (Community Action Duluth, Seeds of Success)
Nyanyika Banda (Mother's Daughter Restaurant)
Food justice activist LaDonna Redmond worked with the performers to bring out their stories so they could be shared with the audience on August 28.
A public conversation will follow the performance.
More information about LaDonna Redmond
LaDonna Redmond is a long-time community activist. When she couldn’t find a healthy food source in her Chicago neighborhood, she decided to rebuild the food system.
She’s worked successfully to get Chicago Public Schools to evaluate junk food, launching urban agriculture projects, starting a community grocery store, and working on federal farm policy to expand access to healthy food in low-income communities. In 2009, she was one of 25 citizen and business leaders named a Responsibility Pioneer by Time Magazine. In 2007, she was awarded a Green for All Fellowship. Redmond was also a 2003-2005 Kellogg Food and Society Fellow and recently served as the Program Director for Agriculture with the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs in the Twin Cities, helping students understand how making change in food systems can bring about both community and individual empowerment.
Redmond is a frequently invited speaker, and currently hosts the weekly Monday evening radio program “It’s Your Health” on 89.9 KMOJ, The People’s Station.
She attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Support for Event
This production is part of an ongoing series of food monologues designed to promote food justice stories. It uses alternative pedagogy to help students engage with the place of food in our community. Faculty from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (Tracey Deutsch, History; Mary Rogers, Horticulture; Julie Grossman, Horticulture; Kristine Igo, Healthy Food/Healthy Lives; LaDonna Redmond, UMN Landscape Arboretum), Morris (Sheri Breen. Political Science- Morris) and Duluth (Randel Hanson (Environment & Sustainability & UMD Land Lab, UMD) are coordinating a series of performances on these issues.
Support for the event is provide by the University of Minnesota’s Vice President for Research and Office of the Provost; the the UMD Land Lab and the Department of Geography, Urban Environmental and Sustainability Studies.