SFA Greenhouse: Growing Stories Behind the Food
The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. Central to this mission is our initiative to collect the stories behind the food, to share them via film and an online oral history archive. The SFA Greenhouse is our newest effort to gather these tales.
There are stories waiting to be told everywhere: by the heirloom vegetable farmer at the neighborhood market, by the bartender at your favorite watering hole, or by the cook who has fed generations at Wednesday night church suppers. We realize that locals know best where to find these stories, and many of you are already working collectors. We would like to include your collections with our own, and thus we invite you to our greenhouse.
What’s the SFA Greenhouse? It’s small budget initiative geared to assist collectors in documenting the food stories in their local areas. We invest such micro funds intermittently, and do not have specific schedules for the application of our funds.
We have a few guidelines to help you decide if your project is right for our Greenhouse:
Is yours a food story? Not all food stories happen in a kitchen. Some begin in the field, others at the table. There are food stories in classrooms and offices, churches and local festivals. And good food stories are rarely just about the food. The best interviews use food as a way to tell a larger story, one about history and family and community.
Is your story local? We believe that locals best know their communities. And we believe that there is value in collecting local history. We want to fund homegrown projects by people in their own communities. There’s a cost savings when we talk about travel and lodging, sure, but it’s also a way that we can guarantee the best local stories.
If you have a local story that needs to be shared, by way of oral history or documentary film, we encourage you to contact us and submit your project for consideration by our Greenhouse.
We’re not interested in lengthy folder-bound proposals or color copies. Just send us a letter, describing your project, its importance, and relevant information about costs and timetables for completion. If you’re working on a film, send us a DVD with some of your footage. If you have interviews in mind, send us one completed oral history for review (including audio, transcripts, and photographs).
Funding requests are accepted on a rolling basis, and please know that when we talk of money, we’re talking small potatoes, not monster rutabagas.