Information School News

Last week the Information School was delighted to host two visitors from Mexico City, as part of the project "Place-making for sustainable development: Learning from Xochimilco", led by Dr Andrew Cox and Dr Jorge Martins. Gibrán Rivera González is an alumnus of the department and is now a lecturer at Instituto Politécnico Nacional. He has been working with Cooperatives in the city training them in business and IT skills. The other guest was Carlos Sumano Arias, one of the leaders of the Chinampayolo an agro-ecological cooperative. They are combining traditional agricultural knowledge with scientific knowledge to create a form of sustainable agriculture that promotes biodiversity. While in Sheffield Carlos and Gibrán took part in a joint seminar. They also visited a number of social enterprises working in the food industry in Sheffield.

Andrew Cox and Jorge Martins were in Mexico City last week, working with Information School alumni, Gibran Rivera (of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional), on an exciting joint project to explore how knowledge can be shared in the context of cultural sustainability. The project investigates the creation of knowledge sharing experiences between eco-friendly social enterprises in Mexico and Sheffield. In one part of the trip Andrew and Jorge participated in a tree planting expedition, organised by Chinamapoylo, a co-op dedicated to sustainable food production in the unique environment of the chinampas, on the edge of Mexico City. The chinampas are a highly productive form of agricultural production based on strips of land reclaimed from the lake in a practice that has survived from pre-hispanic times. They are now under threat from pollution, mass tourism and urban encroachment by the megalopolis of Mexico City. The ahuejote trees (a kind of willow) they were participating in ...