Urban Creators’ HOODSTOCK is taking on ‘land sovereignty and liberation’

Philadelphia Urban Creators (PUC) is back with the fourth annual HOODSTOCK festival this Saturday, and this time, the theme is “Land Sovereignty and Liberation.”

The North Philly nonprofit offers healthy and sustainability-focused programming through its urban farm, Life Do Grow. The farm also provides organic produce to the local community — it accepts SNAP and EBT — and its produce is sold to restaurants to support the farm.

The PUC team and a handful of other urban farms, including Soil Generation, have been partnering with Philadelphia Museum of Art’s PHL Assembled to explore the idea of land sovereignty over the past year.

The partnerships help the farms’ communities in “fighting for food justice” by allowing them to collectively control where they source their food and where they gather, said Jeaninne Kayembe, the executive producer of HOODSTOCK and PUC’s cofounder.

“We believe that all people should have access to land in order to build economic and communal equity,” Kayembe said. “Life Do Grow Farm is just one example of how resilience and creativity can make a sustainable impact on a neighborhood that has suffered from so many issues like food injustice and gentrification.”

Alongside the fight for land sovereignty, the PUC team acknowledges that people who identify as “being queer, free spirited, a person of color or a person of opinion is dangerous in these times so it is places like HOODSTOCK and Life Do Grow farm where folks that identify as such can feel free and safe to be themselves,” she said.

Here are the details of the fourth annual HOODSTOCK festival:

• What — Tour the farm, check out the second National Graffiti Invitational, pet some farm animals, ride a pony and jam during the Global Village Jam Session
• When  – Noon to 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 22
• Where – Life Do Grow Farm, on the corner of 11th and Dauphin streets
• How much – Free

Earlier this year, PUC was a finalist to receive a Knight Cities Challenge grant for its proposed Collective Power Concerts, but ultimately didn’t make the cut. (Knight Foundation is also a sponsor of HOODSTOCK.)

PUC is also moving forward with its paid apprenticeship program focused on leadership and agrarian skill-building for young people, which it funded via crowdfunding campaign last year. The program has been “so successful that our junior staff is taking agency over our summer program,” Kayembe said.