We're celebrating the end of another successful fair with some Yeah!Burger.
Taking part in organizing the Emory Sustainable Food Fair is something I’ve wanted to do since attending the one held during my freshman fall! As someone who really had very little exposure to sustainability practices and concepts before college, it was so refreshing to be in an environment where food was celebrated through the lens of sustainability. Everyone I talked to was knowledgeable about issues ranging from safe seafood to biodiversity in plants and I went back to Longstreet with a lot of new questions. The free food (among other take-home items) certainly drew me in, too. 😉
The Emory Sustainable Food Fair has been offered in the fall semester since 2008 as a one-credit course and is cross-listed between Anthropology, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Italian. Students from any major or year are welcome to enroll, and we often have folks participating in multiple years because they’ve enjoyed their experience so much. Because the course only meets twice each week and only until the week following the sustainable food fair in October, it is not your typical academic course.
We essentially get to work as soon as we walk into class. Professor Muratore and the fair assistant (a past participant in the class and our sustainable food fair expert) have already done a lot of prep work in regards to talking to vendors and getting things started, but there’s a lot to get done before the event.
In the past, we’ve been separated into teams in charge of:
LOGISTICS: (led by the fair assistant) These are the organizational whizzes of the fair, helping us welcome 20 plus or minus vendors and thousands of visitors. They coordinate between the students in the class and the volunteers. Other tasks include keeping in touch with vendors, planning the fair layout, and inviting the VIPs (President, Deans, guest speakers, Peggy Barlett)
HOSTS + ATMOSPHERE: This group makes the fair more exciting by planning and choosing the fair decor. They ensure the design allows traffic to flow smoothly and easy for vendors and patrons to navigate. They also collaborate with other teams to ensure that the costumes are coordinated.
DESIGN + MUSIC + COSTUMES: This group designs the class t-shirt and the overall vibe of promotional materials used by the publicity team. It would be good to have some design skills. For instance, knowing Photoshop would be helpful to design a Snapchat filter to publicize the event! Because live music has been an important part of making the fair more fun, the team provides the music and finds musicians to perform at the fair. They provide the AV equipment and help with set-up and trouble-shooting on the day of the fair.
PUBLICITY: This group creates the overall plan for how to get the word out via all media, using Design Team’s vision for the look and feel. They will also write a summary press release about the fair, and create a schedule of PR activities, including the yard signs. They use the website, Facebook, and Instagram pages to post as planned to build up excitement for the Fair!
FEEDBACK + WELCOMING: This group will ensure that upon arriving at the Fair, all patrons are aware of the educational opportunities we have to offer, are aware of which tables they can go to for help or guidance, and can clearly distinguish what the entrances are. Welcoming team members will also work more closely with vendors and farmers than most to ensure that they feel adequately helped by volunteers for a smooth fair experience! This team will also recruit volunteers to carry out a census of fair-goers and will also adapt our past feedback survey. We want to encourage fair-goers to act on what they learn, so the feedback team will seek to find ways attendees can tell us what they learned and what they are committed to.
Sometimes the tasks overlap or are exchanged between the teams, and expect a lot of cross-collaboration. Each organizing team is also responsible for becoming an expert on topics like sustainable seafood, pollinator protection, low-carbon diets, or whatever your group is passionate about! You’re expected to learn enough about your topic so that when attendees come up to your table, they have a sense of what the issue is and what they can do about it.
Part of our class is dedicated to organizing the fair and the other part is about educating ourselves. We listen to guest speakers, like Taylor Spicer who talked about Emory’s zero-landfill waste initiative last year. We also read excerpts from the Emory sustainable food handbook and discuss Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food.
Throughout the process we learn about each other’s topics through their presentations and their weekly updates. Our assignments include taking a weekly picture about our sustainable (or unsustainable) efforts and working on completing our tasks within the team.
After another successful food fair, you’ll get to have a lovely meal with the whole class! (We got catering from YEAH! BURGER last year!)