Events – SUSTAINABLE L.A.

SUSTAINABLE L.A.
Green Film Series
& Panel Discussion

Saturday, Sept. 11
Panel at 3pm
The Medallion Loft Complex
(corner of 4th & Main Streets, downtown L.A.)

Downtown L.A.’s longest-running “green day” returns for its sixth annual event! Our slate of environmentally conscious films does more than clue us in — they prod, provoke, and press us to action, always in uplifting and entertaining fashion. In turn, we present a compelling action-oriented panel symposium, with ample opportunity to interact with our panel of experts.

This year’s theme: “Great Green Food: How to Grow, Source, and Cook Sustainably in L.A.” Whether you’re a contemporary homesteader with plans to feed an entire community or an apartment dweller looking to grow an edible rooftop garden, our nationally celebrated panelists offer solutions that work for where and how we live. Plus, tips on sourcing the healthiest, most organic food locally and — best of all! — how to cook and serve sustainable, sumptuous repasts.

Films:
1:00 PM – Greenlit
2:30 PM – Sick Amour (with Q&A)
4:00 PM – Green Shorts Program

2010 SLA / Slow Food Panelists:

• Peggy Curry is the Founder, President and Director of Development of Growing Great, a local nonprofit organization that provides a range of programs for school garden and nutrition education. She will demonstrate how planting seeds can build healthy bodies, create tight-knit communities, and just be good fun!
  
  
• Jules Dervaes and his family had been transforming their home the past twenty years. He’ll show how we can all cultivate urban homesteads by harvesting organic food, no matter where we live.
  
  
• Tracy Hepler is co-founder and creative director of Your Daily Thread. She will be sharing tips on eating sustainably for the social good — in social settings that help spread the good word on eating green and great.
  
  
• Thomas Kostigen is a New York Times best-selling author. His newest release is The Green Blue Book:The Simple Water-Savings Guide to Everything in Your Life. He will be speaking about the escalating water crisis and sharing simple and unique water-saving solutions that all of us can implement in our daily lives.
  
  
• KC Ma is the executive chef at Vinoteque after working at both Water Grill and Craft. His sustainable cooking demonstration will show how being good to the Earth is a delicious idea.
  
  
• John Mulrow writes for the Worldwatch Institute’s Transforming Cultures Project and also served as the 2010 Director of Gardening and Environmental Education for Washington DC Summer Camps. John will point out the ways in which education, the media, government policies, and other societal systems have conspired to crate a culture of consumerism–and how we can fight the unhealthy and unsustainable food habits that have come along with it.
  
  
• Monica Richards and William Faith are wellknown as the innovative gothic/darkwave band Faith & the Muse. They’ll speak about permaculture, and how it has changed not only their own lives, but has created sustainable human settlements with the smallest ecological footprint possible.
  
  
• Jill Richardson is the founder of the highly read blog La Vida Locavore and author of the book Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do To Fix It. She’ll tell us why food policy is too important to leave it to the lobbyists — and what we can do about it.
  
  
• Taja Sevelle and Joyce Lapinsky are the directors of Urban Farming, an organization that brings people together in communities throughout America and abroad to plant food on unused land, space, rooftops and walls. They will provide valuable advice on how we can all work toward ending hunger in our generation, while greening the globe.
  
  
• Deborah Eden Tull is author of The Natural Kitchen: Your Guide to the Sustainable Food Revolution and a sustainability coach who has been traveling to, living in, or teaching about sustainable communities internationally for nearly 20 years. She will show us how even the most urban resident can start an organic, sustainable garden with resounding results.
  
  
• Mark Winne is the author of Closing the Food Gap and the forthcoming book Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas. He will challenge the notion that food is a privilege our society only accords the affluent and well-educated — and how we can assure its availability to all, regardless of race, residency, or income.
  
  
• Jason Boardé is the executive director of Pedal Patch Community, a new NPO growing food for the needy and edifying communities on food cultivation and food system resetting — and an urban farming guru and certified producer. Jason will shed light on “urban ag” from local policy to rooftop farming, and discuss why urban farming makes special sense given the economic and social realities of today.