Dig for Yourself: The Lea Valley Institute for Having the Time to Grow Your Own Food Part 1 Project 2023 Aran Shuttlewood Loughborough University | UK At the marshy borders between Tottenham, Edmonton and Walthamstow, industrial processes, arterially serving London, coexist in subtle tension with primordial ecology. The pylon-strung marshes have been used for playing sports and growing food in the past but are now merely recreational, inaccessible, or drowned in concrete.Cartographic explorations show there has been a significant reduction in allotment space in the area: 75 years ago, the UK had around 1.5 million highly productive allotments, each cultivating a tonne of food annually. Today, there are only around 300,000 plots and 100,000 people sitting on waiting lists of up to 40 years. Providing growing space and resources close to people can help to regenerate our food cultivation systems and oppose the failure-prone global food supply chain.We need space and time to grow our own food again.Dig for Yourself is a productive afforestation and compost farming project, enabling people with the space and time to grow their own food. The thesis project, situated in the borderlands of northeast London, supplies future food growers with planter bed kits and rich, healthy compost while operating as a gathering centre for enjoying, learning about and growing food for yourself. Aran Shuttlewood Tutor(s) Benjamin Machin