Chapter 8 - Mona's 24 Carrot Gardens: Seeding an Ecology of Cultural Value

This chapter examines cultural value creation through the <i>24 Carrot Gardens Project</i>. Initiated by artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele of the Museum of Old and New Art, the vision of <i>24 Carrot Gardens</i> is to ‘sow seeds of lifelong learning’ in the areas of health, well-being and sustainability across school communities in Tasmania, Australia. What has eventuated over its five years is a complex relationship between the artful ‘gold standard’ delivered by professional artists and a contemporary art museum with an integrated teaching and site-based learning across the arts and sciences. Designed in response to the local environmental, cultural and socio-economic context, <i>24 Carrot Gardens</i> has contributed to a growing sense of community engagement, interdisciplinary learning and a strong foundation of networked donor investment. With these multilayered interests across a diversity of stakeholders and partnerships, many competing systems of value are at play, with the potential to contribute a new value creation. Firsthand accounts of project contributors are situated amongst the scholarly literature to produce an examination of value exchange and creation including the cultural values identified in <i>24 Carrot Gardens</i>: artistic and creative, economic and industrial and education and environmental. Following this interrogation of the expressed values in this case study, we offer a foundation for a new framework for understanding local cultural value.