Knowledge-sharing projects
Big Picnic
From 2016 to 2019, Meise Botanic Garden is participating in a European Horizon 2020 project on food security, together with 13 European countries and Uganda. Co-creation is central: together with you, your association, or your employer, we’ll create an exhibition, event, debate, or science café.
You’ll find an overview of the projects, the campaigns, and the various partners on www.bigpicnic.net.
A look at our past Big Picnic activities
Sustainable catering under the microscope
More than a quarter of all hot meals are not prepared at home. But are company and school kitchens successful at preparing healthy, delicious, and especially sustainable meals? Big Picnic put the catering at the Botanic Garden under the microscope. Via a survey, we established what our colleagues would like to see on the menu and the degree to which health and sustainability considerations play a role in their choice. Armed with the figures, we made several recommendations.
Every year, the Facilities and Service Department of the Flemish Government prepares nearly one million hot meals for Flemish officials. Big Picnic launched campaigns to make them more aware of the importance of sustainable and healthy meals at work.
‘Discovering the face behind the food’
On 25 March 2017, we organized ‘Discovering the face behind the food’, the inaugural activity in the context of the Big Picnic ‘Your food, our food’ campaign. With fifteen participants of Rwandan, Angolan, Nigerian, Ghanaian, French, and Latvian origin, we shared memories about food and went into the glasshouses in search of plants with a story – stories about how plants supply food and drink, how they help heal people, which symbolic connotations they have... For the participants it was a unique experience, an often moving ‘reunion’ with plants.
For the education staff of the Botanic Garden, the activity generated a wealth of information, which we will be able to use during workshops, tours, and exhibitions. In future, this activity will be offered permanently for the ‘Café Combinne’ groups of Vormingplus. Other ethnically diverse groups are always welcome!
Vegetable gardening with the Cardijn School
Bringing as many people as possible in contact (again) with the origin of their food: that is one of our objectives within the Big Picnic project.
In anticipation of a large social vegetable garden, which will be opened in the walled garden of the Orangery in 2020, this year we are practicing vegetable gardening ‘in miniature’. This spring, pupils from the Cardijn School, a school for special education in Anderlecht, took care of the planting and maintenance of our square-metre gardens. Pupils and teachers were really enthusiastic.
"It was blissful. The lovely weather, the gardens, the beautiful daffodils... Sowing vegetables, sailing on the raft, picnicking outside... Our pupils were really enthusiastic. Today, some of the parents had written in their children’s student planners how happy they were with the trip. For me, it was the first time I had come along, but you are achieving so many goals by offering skills and attitudes in a demonstrable way and with such patience. We were very well supervised by our guide, Marc." (Inge Loyez, teacher Cardijn School)
African Diaspora Agrofood Forum
On 25 April 2018, the ‘African Diaspora Agrofood Forum’ took place in the Botanic Garden. The forum was organized by PAEPARD and the not-for-profit The Foodbridge, in cooperation with the BigPicnic project and the Botanic Garden. Entrepreneurs from the African diaspora met financial backers, policymakers, and researchers who can help their projects to grow. Scientists from the Botanic Garden explained their research into coffee, bananas, and edible tropical mushrooms.
Science café
On 17 May 2018, Meise Botanic Garden organized the science café ‘Biodiversity and your plate’. Does loss of biodiversity endanger our daily bread? Do bees determine the taste of our fruit? Why are ever more pollinating insects disappearing, and what can we do about it? Scientists from within and outside the Botanic Garden explained their research on these themes.
Big Picnic Calender
There are currently no events planned in Belgium.
Research projects
As a research institution, Meise Botanic Garden regularly participates in research projects, in collaboration with our universities or in international consortia.
You can find more information about this on the science pages.