A community garden right in the heart of Kulmbach: that is the idea behind "KulmUNIty". Students enrolled in the University of Bayreuth’s Faculty of Life Sciences: Food, Nutrition & Health in Kulmbach plan to use this project to make the topics of health and sustainability more visible and tangible in Kulmbach's cityscape. The community garden was created this summer semester as part of the module "Health Behaviour and Prevention" in the bachelor's programme Food & Health Sciences. The students managed everything, including a needs assessment, construction and filling, planting everything in the garden beds, and creating a watering schedule.
However the seminar, which was led by Prof. Dr. Tina Bartelmeß, junior professor for the Sociology of Nutrition, was not limited to gardening. "There was an introduction to project management in health promotion and within the seminar various projects were developed, all revolving around how we can also reach the people of Kulmbach through the KulmUNIty Garden and make the university more visible in Kulmbach," said Bartelmeß.
The students came into direct contact with Kulmbach residents in many ways: they presented some dishes they prepared using vegetables from the community garden at the Campus Day and organized events on seasonality, waste separation, growing one's own herbs and healthy eating for pupils from the Obere Schule primary school, the Pestalozzi primary school and for refugee children from Ukraine.
Interested in learning more about healthy eating? Come take a look around the KulmUNIty Garden for yourself: our students have put up self-designed posters that contain recipes for heart-healthy dishes as well as information about the project.
