Making a Natural ‘Pocket Park’ in Japan
With only a few weeks to work, we tried to turn vacant urban land into a pocket park that would make Masanobu Fukuoka and Patrick Geddes proud. Here is the short story of how it happened.
Community Projects
From international festivals to neighborhood farms, our community-based arts and environment projects are offer inspiring experiences where individuals and communities can re-kindle their relationships with the environment.
The Branch, Osaka
An ecological art lab and pocket farm located in Osaka, Japan conceived and built by Patrick M. Lydon and Suhee Kang with help from donors and volunteers from Japan and around the world. The space hosts community workshops and exhibitions by an international cast of resident artists, all aimed at re-kindling our relationship with nature.
REALtimeFOOD (world’s slowest restaurant)
A temporary restaurant is the opening scene for a multiple-month community based arts and ecology project where we bring to life an empty plot of urban land and invite the community to cultivate food, relationships, and creativity.
Urban Pocket Farm
Built along natural farming principals, we transform an empty urban lot into a natural garden based on empathy with all living things, including the weeds, bugs, and all of the life that enters the space. This empathy is woven into a series of arts and environment workshops, and eventually carried into the community by those who visit the garden.
![[HUMAN:NATURE] Megijima](https://cityasnature.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/megi-bug-720x380.jpg)
[HUMAN:NATURE] Megijima
How do we revitalize dwindling communities? First, we learn about what they are and why they are important. This was a two-month community-based project that fused old-fashioned community interactions with web-based interactive media, allowing islanders and visitors to explore the hidden links between people, culture, and ecology on a small island in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea.