Academy Town Square: Planting for the Future

Thursday, October 3, 2024

6:00 PM-7:30 PM

Join us for the next Academy Town Square where Maiken Scott, host of WHYY’s The Pulse, speaks with seedkeepers, farmers and botanists who share how preserving ethnobotanical histories and practices help to advance science and expand our understanding of the natural world — and ourselves.

In neighborhoods across Philadelphia, communities from the Philippines, Burma, Puerto Rico, Vietnam and the African Diaspora steward gardens and farms filled with ancestral plants, where cultural heritage and community science converge.

This conversation is in conjunction with Heirloom Plants: Ancestral Seeds in Philadelphia, an exhibition in our Spotlight Gallery on view through February 17, 2024.

In this conversation, you’ll hear from Chris Bolden Newsome, farm manager at Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden, where farming practices form intergenerational connections to the African Diaspora. Iris Brown shares how plants at Villa Africana Colobó are grown for cooking demonstrations aimed at telling the stories of traditions and cultural practices connected to the African heritage of Puerto Rico. Owen Taylor, owner of Truelove Seeds, discusses how seedkeeping is a form of cultural preservation, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture. And Chelsea Smith, manager of the Botany Collection at the Academy of Natural Science of Drexel University, shares how over a million historical and modern dried plant specimens are used for research and cultural preservation.

Learn how community members, farmers, seedkeepers and scientists are working together to preserve the plant world that we all rely on and how we can all connect to our ancestral foods.

Register for Academy Town Square: Planting for the Future

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