Transformational Pathways
The term “transformational pathways” is often used is systems change work to refer to the avenues that we can take to get from our current, status quo system to the future, transformed food system. These transformational pathways, or levers for change, are ways to unlock the potential for change that is already present in our community. In order to identify what the levers of change are in our community, FeedBack Nashville has conducted a systems diagnosis. This diagnosis consisted of a city-wide survey (with 580+ responses), 5 community listening sessions, a food system forum workshop, 20 comprehensive interviews with key stakeholders, a sense-making workshop, our Future of Food Conversation Series, a community art project, and numerous conversations and events hosted by our Steering Committee members. This mixed-methods approach gives us an in depth picture of how people are experiencing the food system, what its strengths are, where its weaknesses and stress points are. A system diagnosis helps us understand how a system works – the actors, elements, interconnections, and relationships within it. A good diagnosis questions assumptions and illuminates new insights.
In August, FeedBack Nashville hosted a day-long Pathways Workshop, designed to bring together leaders from throughout Nashville’s food system to identify transformational pathways that we can take to build a better food system. Farmers, government officials, nonprofit leaders, and others all came together to hear about the work that FeedBack Nashville has been doing.
These conversations were oriented toward action, and gave us the opportunity to reveal the areas of the systems diagnosis that are either ripe for change or that need further interrogation.
This workshop reflected the fact that this process is not a comprehensive research project - but rather is a living, participatory process intended to drive both further reflection and action. The systems diagnosis is an iterative process, a cycle of collecting data, gaining feedback, trying new things, and repeating the process as many times as necessary.
A large part of the conversations at the workshop were designed to use the systems diagnosis to identify and prioritize pathways forward for Nashville’s food system - areas where action or change needs to happen, to move from today’s system toward our envisioned future. Attendees worked to collectively identify what we think are the pathways forward, i.e. systemic solutions that have the most potential for positive, long-lasting, transformative change for Nashville's food system.
The pathways that they identified will play an important role in defining the work that FeedBack Nashville does going forward.
We want to extend a huge thank you to our hosts for the day: Green Door Gourmet. They provided the beautiful setting for our conversations and the fresh, delicious food needed the fuel them!