Faculty of Art
To tell the stories of Metro Vancouver’s multicultural backyard gardens, interns Wei Yan, Rose, and Gillian worked on reviving the backyard garden project at the Museum of Vancouver. The two planter boxes at the front of the museum, which had been left empty during the pandemic, were transformed into a cultural “backyard” garden, growing primarily East Asian vegetables including bok choy, Taiwanese cabbage, Chinese eggplant, kabocha squash, winter melon, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, and more!
To accompany the garden, an online engagement campaign was hosted on the ChineseCanadianStories Instagram, which centred around food systems education and storytelling, and explored topics such as culinary citizenship and food sovereignty. The series included interviews with local backyard gardeners from a variety of cultural backgrounds, ages, and levels of experience. The highlight of the project was getting to know Sandy, a backyard gardener from Macau, who warmly welcomed us into her East Vancouver garden despite us being complete strangers. Food really does bring people together!
Written by Rose Wu.