Being Human National Humanities Festival, USA, Grant, 2024: “Living Histories, Living Plants: Film, Food, and Fellowship on the Carolina Garden Trail”

Working with a multi-institutional, multi-unit team, we are designing a community event tentatively called, “Living Histories, Living Plants: Film, Food, and Fellowship on the Carolina Garden Trail.” Following a tour of the Carolina Garden Trail stressing the legacy of African-descended crops and plants in North Carolina, participants will watch a screening of the film Living Histories of Sugar (https://www.sugarhistories.co.uk/). The film was produced by a team of University of Edinburgh researchers and Caribbean performance artists, and aims to recast the ways we think about, understand, and live with transnational nature of the sugar industry in the Caribbean, Scotland, and the United States. Attendees will then enjoy a short kitchen demo, learning to make a sweet potato hand pie dessert recipe from a North Carolina baker and national author. Finally, participants will work with Dr. Gillman and Mr. Davis to learn how to propagate plants through a short lesson, taking a home a sweet potato or other seasonally appropriate seedling.