Amanda Harding at NL-CGIAR conference
After long and creative collective preparation, Convene’s Amanda Harding held the space for a two day virtual conference that brought together a community of food systems dialoguers. The conference celebrated the NL-CGIAR research programme, exposing and capitalising on the project and initiative outcomes, while showcasing the essentiality of collaboration for global food security. Following the event, Amanda reflected on the knowledge sharing showcased the day.
Read Amanda’s thoughts below, or in the NL-CGIAR magazine here.
Leaving the lights of the NWO studio, where I had been holed up for two days with a bunch of skilled, passionate professionals, and heading through the rain and wind to the train station and back home to Paris, my adrenalin high was still active! The NL-CGIAR conference had been an immense collective effort, prepared over months, with an ambition that went beyond the standard show-and-tell research event. We had worked to create a space where conversation was elevated through the multiple interfaces of granular quality AR4D (Agricultural Research for Development ) and experimental collaborative formats, where science-policy, sciencesociety and science-business are all woven together.
For Convene, I spend much of my time collaborating with Institutional Conveners to create these “third” spaces for deliberate dialogue, and much of it with the ambition to address the most wicked of wicked problems. The urgent challenge of food, land and water system transformation falls clearly in this ballpark.
Building inclusive momentum into the two-day virtual conference (poster preparation, food-fights, a digital platform, magazine publication, multiple relationship creation) NL-CGIAR research programme set us up for a substance rich experience full of insight, innovation and initiative.
From my birds-eye view, the range of NL-CGIAR projects and initiatives nourishing the combination of panels, debates, arm-chair chats, and carefully curated breakout sessions saw a collective call for a comprehensive food system vision supported by an ambitious strategy, the urgent scaling of transformative inclusive partnerships, the knotty need to address the tension of sustainable smallholder livelihoods were economic models are not in their favour, and the imperative to better translate research results to action and impact.
My lasting impression, now the adrenalin has settled, is of a community of unusual suspects who, despite themselves, have found their commonalities, have demonstrated a model for action, and have signposted both a destination and the collaborative pathways forward.
