Edible City

In the 5-day workshop, we will explore movements and initiatives that engage with food and
the urban environment. We will visit Schrebergärten, collective farms, city beehives and
artistic food collectives in order to learn how to reclaim urban spaces.

The terms “Klauben” and “gleaning” describe a historic, and at times criminalised, practice of collecting what is left after a harvest and the foraging of edible plants in ones environment.

As gentrification and competition for urban space intensify in cities such as Berlin, new strategies are needed to resist these changes. Perhaps it is time to translate the historic foraging traditions into contemporary practices, reclaiming urban space to become more self-sufficient.

We will visit Schrebergärten, collective urban farms, city’s beehives, and Berlins artistic food collectives (such as Bündnis Feuer und Flamme, TDD, Soy Division etc.).

Together with these facilitators, we will investigate how to:

• identify edible plants and practice urban foraging
• grow vegetables and herbs in small spaces
• build collective initiatives within neighbourhoods
• recognise polluted urban environments, and explore ways to remediate them

At each location, we will engage through cooking, tasting, and experimenting, while building a collective archive of strategies that participants can “re-plant” in their own contexts after returning home.

The urban challenges serve as a framework to address the Summer School 2026 motto: Do we have enough food? Do we have enough space? Do we have enough city? And is it time to imagine a new urban strategy?

Schedule

Tuesday - 21th July
Meet-up at University of Arts Berlin
Round trip trough Berlin, visiting Schrebergärten, public beehives and
urban initiatives.

Wednesday - 22nd July
Introduction to foraging in the city space
Trip to Floating University and Tempelhofer Feld

Thursday - 23rd July
Trip to farm project in Brandenburg (tbc)

Friday - 24th July
Trip to Cooking Collectives

Saturday - 25th July
Trip to Bündnis Feuer und Flamme
Collective Cooking session
Final discussions and “Goodbye Dinner”!

Knowledge requirements

• Interest in Material research and experimenting
• Interest in collective initiatives and urban practices

Equipment requirements

Laptop to conduct own research and presentation

Gosia Lehmann is a trans-disciplinary artist, researcher, performer, filmmaker and chef, based in  Berlin. Using techniques from film and theatre, she explores the interdependent relationship between fact and belief. Staging, re-enacting and performing magic tricks are her tools to investigate the subjectivity of ‘knowing’. Her current research deals with belief systems in the context of ‘Economic Shamanism– ’ a condition in capitalism that describes the ambivalent relationship between superstition and algorithms in the world of finances. Gosia studied art and design at Central Saint Martins in London, UdK, Berlin and Tama Art University in Tokyo. She is a guest lecturer at the University of Arts in Berlin.

https://www.gosialehmann.net/

Valerian Blos practice combines tools from the digital realm, mixes them with analog craftsmanship, and creates new materialities. Since 2022 he is assistant professor for the fundamentals of design and new media in visual communication. In his teaching, he negotiates questions of new intermaterialities: what happens when material is no longer tangible? When it disappears or becomes imaginary? Since 2015, he has realised projects for institutions such as TAMA Art University Tokyo, CYENS Cyprus, Berlin Natural History Museum, Fraunhofer Institute, Futurium Berlin, Klassik Stiftung Weimar or Max Planck Institute Jena. Most of those projects in collaboration with Gosia Lehmann.

https://www.valerian-blos.de/

 

Gosia and Valerian are co-founders of Solaris Space, an independent studio and project space with a focus on new media.