Vitenparken

VitenEnga as a folk research arena

VitenEnga is a garden area on Campus Ås that is both a school garden, an exhibition space and the production of vegetables for Andedammen Café. In the past year, VitenEnga has begun to develop into a hub where many actors in research and education from the academic communities on and around Campus Ås connect. With all these points of contact, we see that VitenEnga on Campus Ås is a unique gathering point for many academic communities in education, research, students and the leisure public. In addition to a practical and central location, it is also open to everyone year-round. This opens up (24/7) to being able to work with folk research in an arena that truly facilitates interdisciplinary networking and knowledge building across environments and demographic lines.

Here there is great potential to both extract unique data to develop the learning arena of the school garden and urban agriculture, but especially also to develop folk research. For example, one can look at the development of folk research beyond simply collecting data. Perhaps the participants can also be involved in analysis processes or formulating hypotheses? Folk research on and in school days and urban agriculture can be both natural science, social science, humanities research and artistic development work.

Network collections on Vitenparken

How can local actors in the same terrain be connected and how should and can interdisciplinary collaboration around folk research be set up? We see great growth opportunities for the branch here and would like to cultivate it further through a series of conferences with an introduction to folk research, development and opportunities for folk research with VitenEnga as a starting point (interdisciplinary networking with the professional communities around us) and evaluation of ideas, initiatives and opportunities.

• Tuesday, May 14, 2024 at Vitenparken .
  Introduction to folk research, needs assessment and planning of folk research in a school kindergarten context.
• Tuesday 10 September 2024 at Vitenparken . NOTE! Internal meeting.
  Internal working meeting and idea development with the goal of developing a framework with measurable criteria, as well as exploring opportunities, benefits, pitfalls, risks and alternatives in the use of folk research in school gardens and urban agriculture.
• Thursday, December 5, 2024 at Vitenparken .
  Exchange of experiences and summary of knowledge provided by participants.

National Network for Folk Research

Citizen research involves engaging and involving people who do not have a research background in research, in collaboration with researchers or research institutions. In Norwegian, we have chosen to use citizen science as an overarching term to describe activities where the public is involved in research in various ways and where the end result is new knowledge or insight. Citizen research is about the public and researchers helping each other to produce new scientific knowledge and insight. Often it is researchers who get help from the public to collect data (e.g. water samples), but it can also be projects started by private individuals or organized initiatives to investigate something in the local environment using scientific methods (source: forskningsrådet.no).

The project Folk Research on School Days and Urban Agriculture is supported by the Research Council of Norway in 2024 and is part of the National Network for Folk Research .

Do you want to participate?

Would you like to participate in the network for folk research on school gardens and urban agriculture?

Kontaktperson: Solveig Arnesen, solveig@vitenparken.no
Koordinator: Elise Matilde Malik
Markedsføring og kommunikasjon: Elina Gobeti
Grafiske design: Raquel Maria Marques