Vegetable Garden Parlevinker
In Collaboration with
Arthur Kneepkens
Vegetable gardening and urban agriculture are booming in domains as diverse as art, activism and community work. Internationally, you can think of artists such as Fritz Haeg and Maria Theresa Alves, and “gangsta gardiner” Ron Finley. It is an activity of care, attention and patience. No ego and spectacle; it is more in line with maintenance art. It makes people aware of where their food comes from, of the fact that the public space belongs to us all, and requires our common concern. It is an activity that provides rhythm and structure, that connects with the seasons, and that restores the relationship between labor and yield.
The Parlevinker can make good use of these qualities. That is why we propose to transform the flower boxes into semi-mobile vegetable gardens. We start with mainly low-growing crops; that makes it less attractive to destroy them. And of course we start with crops that give relatively fast results and also apply some color, such as various variants of Swiss chard. The garden plan can be influenced by the extent to which residents will interfere with it. What is going to grow will become eligible in all languages of the neighborhood.
The core team of Moestuin Parlevinker is formed by Pankaj Tiwari (1990) and Arthur Kneepkens (1981). Pankaj Tiwari is a theater maker and artist from India. He grew up in a family of horticultural and arable farmers. In large cities he has done community building projects in various places, creating places where theater, café and vegetable garden come together, such as Sabarmati Café & Theater and Meraki Kitchen & Theater. Arthur Kneepkens has been associated with Theaterstraat as a theater and program maker since 2013. Together with Merel Noorlander, he developed with De Nieuwe Banne a series of 5 participatory programs in the Banne, in which different target groups worked on the historical ideals and utopian dreams of the future of people who live and work in the Banne 2.