Although the summer weather beckons us outside and inspires us to foster a greater sense of community with our neighbours, many people in Ottawa have no choice but to interact with the outside world whether they welcome it or not.

All year round, the neighbourhoods of Lowertown and Sandy Hill are stomping grounds for people without homes. The majority of the city’s shelters and social service providers are found within a three-mile area encircling Rideau Street.

Right in the middle of this neighbourhood, in the unlikeliest of locations, sits Arts Court, home of the Ottawa Art Gallery (OAG) and its “Will Work for Food” garden project, a collaborative, community-building initiative propelled by Ottawa-based artist Jennifer Cook.

This urban vegetable patch grows in the Arts Court yard bordering Daly Avenue and Nicolas Street. Touted as a “lush, colourful, edible, community collaboration” by the OAG, “Will Work for Food” is much more than just a vegetable garden.

This fusion of food, art, and community seeks to bring under scrutiny the vast array of political issues surrounding food production and self-sufficiency, access to food, and the cultural significance of food to the artist and the targeted community. Part of the charm of the project is that the produce created will be consumed by The Ottawa Mission, Operation Come Home, and the community at large.

(A g-Gallery story on the project appeared back in January when the garden idea was in its germination phase.)

“Will Work for Food” got underway in February when artist Jennifer Cook was selected by a jury to lead the initiative. Cook has since worked with community organizations including Operation Come Home and the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre and numerous volunteers to see the project through each stage of the food-growing process. The garden is just starting to see returns now, but with workshops and artists’ talks in the future, there is much to look forward to.

Cook, especially, has big dreams for the 28-cubic yards of soil that the garden consists of: “‘Will Work for Food’ is a reclamation, and transformation of space—it’s a large scale public intervention. It is the most urban approach to food production I have seen in this city,” said Cook. The project does more than provide much-needed meals to people who wouldn’t otherwise get them. Cook points out how the project also “explores themes of consumerism, food security, organic food production, urban agriculture, our dependence on fossil fuels, sustainability, community, and our estrangement from nature.”

How can a collaborative community garden, a project that will bring people together to get dirt under their fingernails be considered political? “The fact that this project is an edible garden grown in the downtown core of Ottawa behind the biggest shopping centre is political,” argues Cook. “The fact that this project is collaborative is political. Though all of these themes come up simply by nature of the project, it is not overtly head hammering political. This is a project of growth, joy and community,” Cook added.

With such lofty aspirations, one might expect the attached physical manifestation to be equally grand. This is not the case with the unassuming “Will Work for Food” garden.

A tall placard at the entrance of the modest green space bears a poem written by spoken word artist Oni the Haitian Sensation that reads:

Culture works full-time
On the walls of your imagination
Art is within your reach dans une pensée creative
Impact changes everything!

Further inside, evidence of this poetic idea is seen in the deep red of a radish protruding from a raised dirt bed. From humble beginnings come delicious returns.

A community vegetable garden in the middle of the city in the fast food age acts as an unexpected political intersection of the arts and the surrounding urban reality. With “Will Work for Food,” as Oni the Haitian Sensation writes, the product of art is indeed within anyone’s reach.