Market’s Educational Initiatives: Open the Door to Community Connection

The 61st Street Farmers Market has made significant strides in promoting a healthy food culture within the Jackson Park Terrace (JPT) community, a nearby subsidized housing development. 

The Market offers healthy eating and crock pot cooking classes to residents, free gardening plots and instruction for resident gardeners, chef demonstrations, a Market shuttle service, Market tours, and weekly free produce distribution.

The Market’s healthy eating and gardening offerings have sparked deeper conversations about healthy living among JPT residents and created greater awareness of and involvement in other Experimental Station programs. 

Chantrel, a JPT resident, Blackstone Bicycle Works alum, and crockpot cooking class participant, enrolled her son Dre in BBW’s Earn-A-Bike camp. Dre now regularly attends Market events, visits the bike shop with friends, and engages in JPT healthy food activities, even bringing friends along to taste fresh strawberries grown at the hoop house garden. 

“The biggest impact has been on the youth participants who feel a tremendous sense of community as evident by their continuing presence in all of our programs, bringing friends and family,” said Emily Cross, the 61st Street Farmers Market Senior Manager.

For JPT residents of all ages, the Market’s healthy eating opportunities become points of entry into the larger community fostered by Experimental Station through our programs, all working to create connection and promote health and wellbeing.