Docks to Delta, Live– the public launch event for our Cal Ag Roots Project– was a hit!
On September 26, 2015, 90 event guests boarded the Capitol Corridor Amtrak to listen to Cal Ag Roots’ first three stories about key moments in California agriculture while traveling through a landscape relevant to the stories. As the conversation between event attendees heated up on the return train home, we could sense that we’d made a real impact. Several people told us that this type of event and conversation is exactly what the California food movement needs and one longtime leader even said, “I think this will be remembered as a seminal moment in this movement—either you were on the train or you weren’t.” Cal Ag Roots has launched!
This fall and winter
We will be honing the stories that we told live on the train into podcasts that will be accessible online by a much wider audience—including the 2 million people that ride the Capitol Corridor train each year. (A partnership with Amtrak means that it will be promoted to all their passengers.) We also have offers to tell the stories live again on two UC campuses—Davis and Merced—and other plans to continue the dialogue about how these stories impact current food and farming policy work.In 2016, we’ll continue to work with people from across California, as well as our dedicated Advisory Council to choose the second set of stories to bring to the food movement’s attention. Docks to Delta, for anyone who hasn’t been following our announcements about this project, is part podcast series and part live event: the stories that were told live on September 26, 2015 will be available via the Cal Ag Roots Story Hub as podcasts this winter.
If you missed the event, please stay tuned for the stories.Feel free to contact us to be added to the Cal Ag Roots newsletter or reach out to Project Director Ildi Carlisle-Cummins at icarlisle-cummins@cirsinc.org with ideas and questions. Check out this short video (made for last summer’s crowd-funding campaign) which gives you a flavor of Docks to Delta: