Gardening tools in place of firearms?

Community gardens could be social and economic game changers

About six years ago, Carl Awsumb read a front-page article in a Memphis newspaper about the amount of violent crime in the city and how it seems that practically everybody was buying a firearm and learning how to use it.

“I was so horrified by that,” he recalls.

That article was the necessary catalyst prompting Carl to nurture the growth of new found neighborliness through work on a community garden.

He was nearing retirement and eager to use his time to support the city he loves.  The garden, which was started as a raised bed in the parking lot of The Commons in Binghampton, seemed like a logical place to combat the negative perceptions and realities people seem all too eager to highlight in the city.

“Sometimes people are worried about what they’re going to do in retirement and I realize I had the easiest transition of anybody I knew,” Carl says, and he began to recruit others like him to help.

Today, a core of about 10 people contribute to the work and Carl sees people from all backgrounds that live in the neighborhood connecting with each other over the primal experience of growing food together, and realizing some modest economic benefits.

The group soon understood that to have the greatest impact they would need to engage young people and offer modest financial incentives.  Two years ago they began paying small amounts during harvest time — a dollar a pint for Cherry tomatoes, for example, that the children would then see sold at market for $3.

“Then we could start the whole dialogue about what you do with the other $2, for next Saturday, next season, next year,” Carl says.

In months when there is no harvest, there is a heap of work to do and a flat rate of $5 per hour is paid to people helping prepare for the next season.

“It gives us a chance to talk to them about the meaning of work and what they’re going to do with that $5,” Carl says.

Everyone understands that funds are limited and the money will not last, yet if they want to reap the benefits of next harvest, they can decide to continue working after the funds dry up.

It has not been easy to bring everyone together, he admits. Mistrust still exists between different groups of people in parts of the city, yet progress is being made as the initiative continues to expand.

The more Carl learns, the more he says he believes that urban agriculture could be an answer to many of the problems facing cities today, both economically and socially.

- Kristian Partington -

If you have questions, comments or a story to share, please contact kristian@axiomnews.ca.

The truths of poverty framed through art

Focus for the Good capturing community transformation

through a lens

Courtesy of Focus for the Good

Their faces are honest and raw, at times looking withered and worn beneath the many lines of worry and sadness, but glints of hope sparkle in the corners of eyes that have witnessed the hardships of life on the streets.

They are the Forgotten Faces of Memphis, captured through the lenses of Bill Piacesi’s cameras, and in their stark realism the truths of poverty are captured with an authenticity that calls to memory photos of the 1930s American heartland.

Bill operates Focus for the Good out of a studio in The Commons on Merton, putting his one-man nonprofit organization in the heart of the quest to make the community better for a host of marginalized segments of the Memphis population.

He trades his services in exchange for the space and in doing so captures the work of his neighbors in ways only a professional photographer could. In his photos, we see the Refugee Empowerment Program at work alongside the Door of Hope, which offers paths for homeless people to discover the potential of a better future.

Through art, the missions of all partners within The Commons overlap, and the possibilities of a regenerative community shine.

“A lot of us kind of draw from the advantages of knowing each other within the building and it’s a unique experience,” Bill says, as he considers how the Center for Transforming Communities, which operates The Commons, has brought so many people together under one roof.

“It’s a unique experience as opposed to your typical business office where you can have five or six businesses in the same area that are totally disconnected and have nothing to do with each other.”


As the sole-proprietor of his operation, the benefits of being part of The Commons and intimately knowing the partner organizations are many, Bill says, because the struggles of marketing his work and ideas are lessened through the network he’s built there.

His ultimate goal is to catalyze social change through his art by telling the untold stories from the streets of Memphis. Like the photos from the time of the Great Depression or the height of the civil rights movement that first drew him to photography when he was a teenager, Bill’s pictures are a powerful means of bringing truth to light.

“Not only were those images incredibly artistic but they were also powerful social messages that took what was going on in one part of the country and helped spread that notion to a wider community, and ended up leading to social change,” he says.

His hope for similar change is what he pours into the Forgotten Faces of Memphis and the work of Focus for the Good.

By Kristian Partington, Axiom News