The inspiration behind PolyCultures: Food Where We Live came from witnessing the transformative effect of local food on communities. The New Agrarian Center and LESS Productions co-produced PolyCultures as a collaborative project to capture this effect through digital film and link it to broader issues facing our food system. For me, this inspiration was most visible through the work of City Fresh, an effort to connect local food to inner-city neighborhoods that lacked healthy food access.
In 2005, Maurice Small and Brad Masi worked to start the City Fresh program. City Fresh began as a nine month planning process involving 15 government agencies, businesses, non-profit organizations, and farmers working on finding ways to improve health and nutrition in inner-city neighborhoods in Cleveland that lacked access to healthy foods.
