Hungry Heartland: Exploring Food Deserts in the Breadbasket

 

Project Leader:

Shreepad Joglekar

Lindy E. Bell Head of the Department of Art, Associate Professor

Project Description:

Hungry Heartland is a multimedia educational and outreach campaign initiated in Fall 2018 by K-State students in three departments: Art, Media and Communication, and English. The project includes photographic work, and short documentaries that reveal, document, and interpret the issues of healthy food accessibility and food insecurity in Kansas.

Kansas is the Wheat State, the nation’s breadbasket, and a leader in grain sorghum, corn, soybean, and beef productions. By all appearances, it is a bustling agricultural state where food access should be the least of one’s concerns. Yet ironically, right here in our agricultural state are patches of food deserts where nearly 25 percent of local Kansans lack affordable and easy access to fresh food.

Few people living their lives comfortably give food access a second thought. Very little of this dire situation is known to Kansans and other people outside the state. The Hungry Heartland project was initiated with the central goal of education and outreach to improve public understanding of these issues.

The distinguishing aspect of this project is that it illustrates how audio visual media can be used to initiate constructive social dialogues about the immediate concerns of communities. The project serves a dual educational purpose - students who investigated the issues of food insecurity and lack of access discovered facts and facets of these issues in their own communities which they were not aware of, and their work in turn becomes the vehicle to further engage and educate wider population potentially leading to positive social change. Much of the work in the project is being produced through interdisciplinary dialogue, independent research, and collaborative spirit which makes it unique.

Hungry Heartland exhibition, Chapman Gallery

Hungry Heartland exhibition, Volland Foundation Gallery

Project Website: hungryheartland.com