'Addressing Food System Issues Through Drama and the Creative Arts' by Mary Swander, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Emerita, Iowa State University, Executive Director of AgArts and Artistic Director of Swander Woman Productions

Wednesday 16th December - 20:00 - 21:00, MS Teams. Please register below and you will receive a link by email prior to the event to join

Mary Swander will highlight her success touring agricultural dramas throughout the United States, raising awareness about issues in the food system. She will discuss her plays Farmscape, Vang, and Map of my Kingdom that confront agricultural topics from livestock confinement to immigration to farmland succession. In the U.S., Swander’s theatrical troupe has performed from coast to coast in farmers’ barns, colleges and universities, and major agricultural conferences. Currently, she is continuing her creative exploration of agriculture through a podcast called “AgArts from Horse; Buggy Land,” filled with storytelling about the the Amish, interviews with farmers, and others making artistic imprints on the rural environment.

As an award-winning author, Swander has published many volumes of poetry and non-fiction as well as plays, essays and magazine articles, and she is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio. She is the Artistic Director of Swander Woman Productions, a theatre troupe that performs dramas about food, farming, and the wider rural environment and also the Executive Director of AgArts, a non-profit designed to imagine and promote healthy food systems through the arts.