This August, Rooted East hosted a Garden Karaoke Fundraiser to support our Home Garden Program as we move into planning for the next year’s growing season! We hosted this fundraiser at the Concrete Garden. This garden is a collaborative project between Rooted East and our community partner, Battlefield Farm & Gardens. It is a collective growing space where our Home Growers & other folks from the East Knoxville community steward a garden that was developed on a slab of concrete in the heart of East Knoxville!

At the fundraiser, dozens of folks from all over the area gathered to support food systems work & urban agriculture in East Knoxville.

We had herbal mocktails, karaoke, indigo dyeing, screen-printing (with our new logo!), a build-your-own bouquet flower bar filled with fresh flowers from our growers & other local gardens.

Folks had an amazing time and we gathered well into the evening!

Community members and comrades all pitched in to make set up and breakdown seamless. Folks told us that there used to be thriving businesses and food options on the block we were on, but due to urban renewal and gentrification, those businesses went under. This phenomenon is common in most Black communities in urban areas across the country. This issue is one of the many reasons Rooted East’s home garden program and work is based in East Knoxville. It was great to be able to gather community and bring celebration back to a space central to East Knoxville.

The funds that we raised will go directly toward extra support and materials for Home Growers in our Home Garden Program. We also fundraised for increasing storytelling capacity through photo & video documentation of the work we are doing. Funding will also go toward paid learning opportunities for our growers–whether that be farming and agriculture conferences like the Black Urban Growers Conference or for seminars on food systems leadership.

We hope to continue to host events and classes in this beautiful space. It has been so encouraging and moving to see urban agriculture and communal gardens becoming vessels for collective wellbeing in a neighborhood.