About us
Mission
The Carrboro Greenspace is a non-profit organization that serves as a hub to cultivate “do-it-ourselves,” community-driven, sustainability practices through collaborative projects, creative education, and social events.
Vision
We envision a world of diverse, resilient communities – where people collaboratively learn about, teach, and practice sustainable ways of living.
History
The Carrboro Greenspace Collective was formed in 2006 by Michal Osterweil, Sammy Slade and friends in an effort to create a center for community and sustainability on 10 acres of beautiful green space close to the heart of Carrboro on Old Pittsboro Rd. Unfortunately, we were unable to purchase the space but the wonderful video below illustrates the various projects that went on in the space until 2007:
Since the loss of the space, we have partnered with various community members and organizations to continue projects in support of community and sustainability including the formation of the Carrboro Community Garden Coalition, workshops/skillshares, film series and an annual Urban Farm Tour. To find out more about our current projects please browse our website. Thanks and best wishes!!
Project Coordinators
Sammy Slade’s passion for creating a community that is resilient to the effects of climate change and peak oil has resulted in co-founding the Carrboro Greenspace Collective in 2006 and the Carrboro Community Garden Coalition in 2008. He was elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 2009 (term ends in 2013). Before serving on the board he was chairman of the Local Living Economy Task Force and helped create LocalMotive; he is involved with other local organizations including Transition Town CH and NC Powerdown and currently works as full-time outreach coordinator with NC Warn empowering community in support of replacing coal burning plants with sustainable energy options.
Michal Osterweil is co-founder of Carrboro Greenspace and lectures at UNC-Chapel Hill in Global Studies. Her research focuses on contemporary social movements and their knowledge production; she is interested in the “new political imaginary” being developed at the intersection of the Counter-Summits, World Social Forum and Zapatista movements and dedicated to projects aimed at solving social and political ills of our day. Beyond the local area, Michal is involved in an Inter‐University Consortium on the Americas in Comparative and Transnational Perspective, entitled Social Movements and 21st Century Cultural‐Political Transformations. She is also a founding member and editor of Turbulence: Ideas for Movement.
Andrea Wood has been building sustainable do-it-ourselves community with the Carrboro Greenspace since 2006. In 2008, she joined the Crop Mob in their efforts to rebuild farming communities upon a foundation of mutual aid. She worked for many years in the libraries of the university, a period as farmers’ market manager in Chapel Hill and created a local food business, Porcino, which has since been passed on to friends. She joined Vimala at her community kitchen in 2009 and works as web, flyer, etc. designer and tech helper at Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe. In winter of 2011, she joined the YardSprout team. She lives in Bolin Creek Cooperative and dabbles in gardening, cobbing, mushroom cultivating and fermentation.
Peter Brayshaw is a musician, community activist, herbalist, cook and farmer. Since 2006, he has been an active collaborator with the Carrboro Greenspace Collective and helped found the Carrboro Community Garden Coalition in 2008. He has trained in wild edibles and herbalism with traditional midwives in Albuquerque, NM, at home in the Appalachian Mountains and locally with Will Andres. Peter cooked with Vimala for many years in her home-based community kitchen and now cooks in Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe. When not busy with all of these undertakings, he loves to let loose with friends and play folk & experimental music.
Liane Salgado works with the Carrboro Greenspace on our workshop series. She grew up in Chapel Hill, left to study ecology, local plants, medicinal plants, sustainable living and permaculture as a National Science Foundation scholar at the University of Michigan’s doctoral program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the 1970s and moved back to Chapel Hill in 1987.She is currently working at Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe including hosting their beautiful kitchen garden, collaborating on the local Transition Town effort and developing a community permaculture center as well as supporting local and urban agriculture and solid waste reduction efforts. In addition, she does GIS, energy modeling, and technical writing for conservation non-profits and local businesses.
Laurel Shulman is a baseball playing, dancing, cheese making, cooperative living, acting, gardening and meditating kind of lady. Originally from Orlando, she moved to North Carolina after graduating from New College of Florida and worked with a local cheese maker before moving to Carrboro.
She is actively involved with the Carrboro Greenspace, Dance Magic Dance Productions and the Weaver Community Housing Association, and loves every minute of it.
Rob Jones is a radical educator and food activist working to make sustainable food accessible and affordable by empowering communities to grow food. In addition to coordinating Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe’s sustainability efforts, Rob is a fellow with Good Work; a social entrepreneurship and community development non-profit based in Durham, NC where he works to expand our understanding of entrepreneurship to include all of the ways we create livelihood for ourselves; from paid work to growing food in a home or community garden. He is also a co-organizer of Crop Mob, a group of young, landless, and/or wannabe farmers that works collectively and builds community within sustainable agriculture. Also, a mycologist, you can soon find him at Carrboro Farmers’ Market selling mushrooms as part of Woodfruit.
