My name is Dr Mikey Tomkins. Academically, I studied fine art, before completing a master’s in architecture at UEL. Following on from this I completed my PhD at the University of Brighton in the school of architecture and design, where I am currently an honorary research fellow. From 2014 – 2018 I worked in Dallas and Iraq , developing UA for refugee camps as co-founder of the NGO The Lemon Tree Trust. I continue this work with Cultivating Refuge where are developing food gardens for those displaced by the war against ISIS.
I have also been woring extensively with mapping urban space as part of the Edible Maps, which I began in 2010. The project combines mapping, artist-led walks, with talking, costumes as well as initiating food production as a form of land use. The maps combined academic-artistic approaches and can enrich and complement quantitative approaches to developing UA, where the questions of yields and practice are brought to life through stories, enactments, and images.
This site documents my work with mapping, communities, and urban spaces with an overall interest in urban agriculture and urban nature. I explore this through a nexus of food, art, and research, including quantitative mapping, consultation work, including creative and cultural responses such as costumes, hand-drawn maps, and group city walks.
I have been fascinated by differing yet interconnected question around food production and nature in cities, broadly asking, what does an “Edible City” look and feel like? How extensive will it be? Or what cultural practices might emerge in a city of productive soil, edible plants, urban bio-diversity, and small-scale agriculture? A city where open spaces, offices corners and rooftops find room for greenhouses, vegetable gardens, livestock, and nature? Where harvests travel less and are more visible, where food is fresh, not because it has been chilled for thousands of miles but because you just picked it.
The need for the Edible City becomes urgent as we become a globally urban species, where research clearly proves megacities can, and should, grow part of the food they consume, rather than rely wholly on external agriculture. This is likely to happen when countries enter a period of crisis, but how can we embrace urban food and nature in permanence, as a necessary step towards more sustainable urbanism?
Please feel free to send me comments or questions to mikeytomkins at gmail dot com or LinkedIn.
