Lea at Natureza from her GMF flickr feed

The phenomenal social practice artist, filmmaker, curator, ISEA2012 Radical Cosmologies theme co-leader and friend Lea Rekow’s latest project in Rio is Green My Favela (GMF). Lea is working with The Valão, one of the poorest neighborhoods of Rocinha, Brazil’s largest favela. A quarter of a million people occupy less than a square kilometer of space. There is no drainage, planned water runoff, or sewerage system, and there are few green spaces.

Lea is working with Rochinha community leader Tio Lino and the kids of The Valão to produce their own food through a series of urban food garden and related projects in order to increase food security and protection for at-risk children, and children in need of care.

She recently sent me an update on the project, presenting the work at the Naturenza Arte Scienzia 2012 Symposium.

Lea’s beautiful daughter Sophia (she’s so much bigger than the last time I saw her!) looks over the variety of vegetable starts for give away at Natureza.

Through the GMF blog, I learned about 596 Acres, an exciting project in NYC that links a variety of media and online tools with research about the hundreds of acres of vacant land that exists in the city and ways that communities can access that land. Here’s some information via their promo, more videos via their site 596acres.org:

596 Acres Promo from Conspire Films on Vimeo.