After the busiest ever year at Banter – 16 sessions in 2012 – we start 2013 with Grow It Yourself.
This discussion has been prompted by the huge number of people who are now growing their own vegtables, herbs and fruit. For example, the Twisted Pepper’s sister venue, the Bernard Shaw, now has the Raver Cottage garden on its roof which provides the cafes and bars in both venues with fresh herbs and veg and we’ve also seen the massive growth in community gardens around the city and country.
We’d going to have a look at what’s behind this movement of going back to growing your own, the scalability and sustainability of this and how people can be encourage to take up a shovel and get digging. We’re doing this at the start of the year too as that’s when people make resolutions to do this kind of thing so this will hopefully prompt them to actually follow through on their good intentions.
The Grow It Yourself panel: Ella McSweeney (RTE’s Ear to the Ground and BBC Radio 4), Kaethe Burt-O’Dea (Sitric Community Garden, SPUDS), Sinead Keenan (Healthy Food For All) and Andrew Douglas (Urban Farm, Dublin). 
Artist’s impression of what the Urban Farm at Chocolate Factory might look like Venue and date: Twisted Pepper, Middle Abbey Street, Dublin 1; Tuesday January 22 (doors open 7.30pm the Banter gets going at 8pm sharp). Tickets: admission is free but you must sign up in advance to our guestlist here. We’ve a lot of really cool Banters on the way in ’13 so make sure to sign up to the mailing list or subscribe to the site to find out more.