By Gary Steuer, Chief Cultural Officer Philadelphia The City of Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (OACCE), which has the oldest percent for art program in the nation, had decided to get more actively engaged in temporary public art, particularly in projects that help our City address critical issues such as sustainability. A new temporary art project. Soil Kitchen, is the result of that effort and will take place April 1-6, 2011. Soil Kitchen was created for Philadelphia by the Bay area-based artist collective known as Futurefarmers, led by Amy Franceschini, Dan Allende and Ian Cox. This project has been made possible through the generous support of the William Penn Foundation, coincides with the E.P.A.’s National Brownfields Conference, and is managed by OACCE staffer Theresa Rose

The idea behind Soil Kitchen was to create an art project that would educate the public about the issue of soil contamination, as well as the productive use vacant urban land can be put to for urban farming when properly treated. Futurefarmers is transforming a vacant property, located on the SW corner of 2^nd Street and Girard Avenue, a central location in a transitional neighborhood, into a wind-mill powered multi-use space where citizens can enjoy free soup in exchange for soil samples from their neighborhood. The E.P.A. has donated a mobile lab to the project, and will be testing the soil samples. Futurefarmers has also created a whimsical poster that includes a visual guide detailing how to take a proper soil sample from your own backyard or neighborhood park. Chef Peg Botto of Cosmic Catering will be serving soup made from locally sourced ingredients. Through the exchange of soup for soil, Futurefarmers is reminding Philadelphians of the connection between the ground we walk on and the food we eat.

Beyond soup and soil, participants are invited to take a number of free workshops involving issues of sustainability specific to Philadelphia’s urban environment; including demonstrations on soil remediation, composting, wind turbine construction and lectures by soil scientists and urban farmers. In addition, Futurefarmers will use the data from the soil samples collected to create a Philadelphia brownfields map and soil archive.

The location for Soil Kitchen was specifically chosen by Futurefarmers for its proximity to a Don Quixote monument. Soil Kitchen’s windmill pays homage to the famous windmill scene in Cervantes’, Don Quixote. Rather than being an “adversarial giant” as the windmills were in Cervantes’ novel, the Soil Kitchen windmill functions as a symbol of self-reliance. The windmill also serves as a sculptural invitation to imagine the potential for a green future and to participate in the exchange of soil for soup- literally taking matters into one’s own hands. Soil Kitchen will provide sustenance along with tools to inform and respond to possible contaminants that exist in one’s environment, while at the same time re-establishing the value of natural resources through a trade economy.

Executing this project required many partnerships, both with City agencies, and with property owners and nonprofit agencies. It is also exciting that the EPA Brownfields conference attendees will be invited to visit Soil Kitchen, and that the conference itself features a session specifically on the role artists and the arts can play in addressing sustainability and environmental issues. Updates on Soil Kitchen news, along with a schedule of the many public programs offered during the duration of the project, can be found at www.soilkitchen.org, where you can also sign up to follow the project on Facebook and Twitter.