“Co-designing Food Revolution for Social Change” was a four-year, federally funded action research project at Zayed University, asking how individual and collective wellbeing shift when you change a food system. The question was never only about food.
At its center was KULNA Community Garden — All of Us in Arabic. A physical sanctuary where students and faculty grew food, and in growing it, found reasons to be in the same place at the same time. Around the garden grew hands-on workshops, lectures, campaigns, and the ordinary interactions that turn a site into a community.
What emerged was a web of connection none of the participants could have seen alone — farmers, filmmakers, naturalists, permaculture researchers, students, volunteers — and, hidden inside it, a picture of what the future would ask of them.
The project produced multiple academic papers. It also produced a network that is still exchanging today, long after the funding ended.
