Community Arts in Critical Research, Curriculum, and Pedagogy: Understanding and Changing Food Practices as a Leadership Issue.

Given the recognized importance for improved food practices worldwide, this paper presents a theoretical justification for the incorporation of 'community' arts as integral to effective research, teaching, and learning about foods. The authors report on placeand- arts-based pedagogies, in combination with experiential and discovery learning, used in a pilot study located on Canada's east coast. Study purposes are to focus attention on rural realities, involve students as researchers, re-claim former levels of community food self-sufficiency, and develop the study of food as part of extant curricula. Music and poetry are treated in detail, and educational leaders are urged to experiment further with these and other arts forms in recreating the history of food, assessing its gradual rationalization and commodification, and envisaging a better future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]