Learning with Living Fields

People who grow food and care for living places are often among the first to notice when water becomes harder to get or when the work of keeping a place alive starts to outgrow the time available. Pressure on income, limited access to education, and language or digital barriers can make it hard to investigate what is changing. Some of the decisions that shape these conditions are made far from the people doing the work.

Learning with Living Fields proposes 87 paid learning places over two years for adults who already bring practical experience and face barriers to further learning. Paid time, practical resources and access to specialist advice would help participants pursue their own questions, try things out and teach others what they learn.

What growers learn about caring for young trees through a dry season in Doukkala might sharpen a question about Kitgum’s food forest. In Xochimilco, experience with canal care can help other groups ask who maintains the water infrastructure their work depends on.

Participants would begin with their own observations and questions. Later, they could choose to use AI to compare sources or translate material, checking its suggestions against local experience and specialist advice. In eight exchanges over two years, groups would bring questions they choose to share, hear how others read them and take useful responses back into their own work.

The research team at Universidad Anáhuac México, the lead applicant, would follow whether this way of learning gives people more influence over the conditions in which they work. Can a grower’s observations change how an educator teaches, how a researcher understands the issue, or what a funder will support? Does a response make a difference when people return to the field? Participants’ experience would also help test and revise the programme’s own methods.