91泡芙

This article is authored by Belinda Li, a PhD candidate in the Food Systems Lab at the School of Resource and Environmental Management at 91泡芙, and a Fall 2024 Graduate Fellow. Her research explores how community composting supports sustainable food systems in rural British Columbia and uses songwriting as a creative method to communicate findings and engage the public.

I once said that to my PhD supervisor when I was in the thick of coding my interview transcripts and feeling the brain hurt from all the reading and re-reading. Meanwhile, I was working on an abstract and trying to throw together a video to summarize my research for the SSHRC Storytellers鈥� Contest a few days before the deadline.

Then, the moment of inspiration came as I thought about my community partner. 

From community composting to MASHville

In the past year of my PhD research journey, I partnered with to support their community composting pilot while collecting data for my PhD thesis. MASH is a non-profit organization with a mission to 鈥減romote sustainable food security and food sovereignty by strengthening our local community of farmers, ranchers, and producers鈥�. 

In 2024, MASH responded to community demand for local soil amendment by piloting a community compost program. Compost is an important soil amendment for building healthy soils to support food production. It adds organic carbon and nutrients to the soil, as well as helps with water retention. Many rural communities, including the Hazeltons, do not have compost infrastructure. MASH filled this gap by developing a central composting hub. They collected food scraps and other organic materials from local businesses and residential drop-offs for composting at the hub.

During one of my visits to the Hazeltons, Laurie, the Executive Director of MASH, about shared her dream of creating MASHville, a place to demonstrate a circular food system integrating food growing and composting. She also joked about how MASHville would have a country band. 

Thinking about MASHville brought a smile to my face and helped me break out of my writer鈥檚 block. 

Synthesis through songwriting

One part of my research was interviewing people representing different points of view in the Hazeltons and surrounding communities about composting. The 22 participants in these interviews included food businesses, farmers, residents, and compost/waste facility managers. From these interviews, I aimed to identify factors that support or hinder community composting and potential interventions that could bolster community composting.

Combing through the themes that I coded in my interview transcripts while envisioning a country band, melodies started to emerge. Exemplary quotes became the basis for lyrics. Being constrained to the structure of fitting words to music in a song that is less than 3 minutes seemed to work better for me to distill my findings to some key points.

Thanks to the free studio spaces at the Vancouver Public Library and SFU Library, I managed to record my song over a couple sessions. Using Canva, I paired my song with visuals, and a music video was created. I gave this song the title "Community Composting Hoedown" as a tribute to MASHville.

Then one thing led to another

I was not selected as a finalist for the SSHRC Storytellers鈥� Contest. But the story does not end there. I shared my music video with Laurie, who then showed it to her husband, Bill. Besides being the mastermind behind building MASH's compost boxes, Bill is also a talented musician. He decided that he too should write a song about compost, aptly named .

At around the same time, MASH was planning a Community Composting Convergence for community composters in Northern BC along with their annual general meeting and fundraising dinner. Building off our compost-inspired music, Laurie went all out and set up a Compost Talent Show for the fundraising dinner. Kispiox River Lodge, where these events were being held, just happened to have a performance space with a piano. So, I put my fear of messing up aside and performed my song. We had a full evening of entertainment of songs, raps, celebrity impressions, and storytelling. It was a night that I will cherish and remember.