FRI-A03: Building a Bigger Table: Participatory, Low-Tech Design Strategies for Designing Healthy Agroecosystems

Friday, October 10, 2025

8:30 AM - 9:45 AM CT

Location: New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 220-222

1.25 PDH, LA CES/HSW, AICP, NY/HSW, FL

Speaker(s)

Ayana Curran-Howes, Student Affil. ASLA

PhD Candidate
University of Vermont, Institute for Agroecology
Burlington, Vermont
Emilie Taylor Welty, AIA

Associate Professor, Director of Architecture Program
Tulane School of Architecture
New Orleans, Louisiana
Mina Seck

Community Food Director
Sprout
New Orleans, Louisiana

Empowering farmers and growers through participatory action research and design uses their oft-ignored expertise as land stewards to meet the increasingly intertwined dilemmas of today (e.g., food insecurity, climate change). This panel highlights transdisciplinary approaches to center growers’ diverse values and needs in agroecological design across urban and rural case studies

Learning Outcomes:

Discover the imperative for engaging and empowering farmers and urban growers, especially of marginalized identities, as designers for effective, just landscape transformation.
Ascertain place-based, grounded, participatory design tools and best practices for research engaging diverse communities and centering their values in design.
Connect farmer/grower values to timely agroecological urban and rural design elements and apply the case study findings in your own practice or academic settings.
Extrapolate impact of design to broader food systems issues and policy measures.