Key Takeaways
- MIT’s STS.S22 course moved learning beyond the classroom, immersing students in Barcelona’s cooperative and regenerative‑agriculture initiatives.
- Hands‑on activities—cooking for migrants, rebuilding a greenhouse, and foraging—highlighted the practical power of community‑driven sustainability.
- Students reflected on how confronting discomfort (e.g., cooking unfamiliar ingredients) revealed their capacity to effect change within constrained systems.
- The experience sparked continued collaboration on campus, with weekly “Barcelona‑style” dinners reinforcing the networks formed abroad.
- Professor Kate Brown emphasized a localized, degrowth‑informed approach to climate challenges, encouraging students to see solutions rooted in community ecologies rather than top‑down technological fixes.
Course Overview and Objectives
The Independent Activities Period (IAP) course STS.S22, How to Grow Resilient Futures: Regenerative Agriculture and Economies in Catalunya, Spain, was designed by Kate Brown, the Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in the History of Science, to move beyond textbook discussions of sustainable farming. Offered as a Global Classroom through MIT International Science and Technology (MISTI), the three‑week syllabus paired academic readings with direct engagement in Barcelona’s cooperative movements, urging students to confront capitalist development narratives and explore alternative, community‑centred solutions to climate resilience.
Partnerships and Fieldwork Structure
Through Brown’s connections at the Barcelona Urban Research Institute and Research and Degrowth (R&D), plus MISTI Spain’s logistical support, eight undergraduates and four graduate students visited farms, slaughterhouses, eco‑resorts, and community spaces. The itinerary intentionally alternated historical context—tracing Catalonia’s century‑old cooperative traditions—with contemporary practice, allowing learners to see how past movements inform present‑day initiatives such as Llavora, a localized pig‑farm operation that minimizes waste by cycling nutrients back into the soil.
Community Kitchen at the Agora Squat
During the first week, the group partnered with volunteers at the Agora Squat, a reclaimed pocket park that residents saved from a planned luxury hotel by invoking Spanish law permitting communal use of idle land. The squat now hosts a community kitchen and gardens, providing weekly meals for up to sixty recent North‑African migrants using surplus produce from local vendors. This setting offered a tangible example of how grassroots legal action can transform underused urban space into a hub of food security and social cohesion.
Cooking Challenge with Turnips
On a particular Thursday, MIT students became impromptu nonprofit managers and chefs: they solicited donated turnips and other vegetables from nearby fruiterias, devised a recipe on the spot, and prepared a stew in the squat’s modest kitchen. Guided by fresh chilies harvested from the garden, the cohort turned what could have been waste into a flavorful dish simmered in a large metal pan over propane burners. Professor Brown noted that the exercise pushed many participants outside their comfort zones, illustrating how confronting unfamiliar tasks can unlock creative problem‑solving and a sense of collective agency.
Student Reflection: Sonia Torres Rodriguez
First‑year PhD candidate Sonia Torres Rodriguez, whose doctoral work focuses on affordable and climate‑resilient housing, described the cooking experience as empowering. She emphasized that, despite lacking culinary expertise, the group collectively produced a nourishing meal for seventy people, demonstrating that meaningful impact arises from collaboration rather than individual perfection. Rodriguez highlighted that such immersive workshops—impossible to replicate virtually—reinforced her belief in the agency of like‑minded communities to reshape isolating systems.
Visit to La Bruguera Eco‑Resort
Calvin Macatantan, a senior in computer science and urban studies, was particularly moved by the stay at La Bruguera, an eco‑resort partnered with R&D that functions as a “living laboratory.” There, the cohort attended talks on regenerative agriculture, soil health, and low‑tech agroforestry, complemented by hands‑on workshops in eco‑art, grass‑weaving, and greenhouse reconstruction. These activities illustrated how low‑technology, knowledge‑sharing approaches can sustain ecosystems while fostering cultural expression and practical skill‑building.
Final Project: Children’s Book
As a capstone assignment, Macatantan and a teammate authored and illustrated a children’s book that personifies soil as the main protagonist, narrating La Bruguera’s regenerative work for young readers. The project required synthesizing scientific concepts into an accessible story, reinforcing the course’s goal of translating complex sustainability ideas into forms that can educate and inspire broader audiences, especially the next generation.
Sofia Espindola de La Mora’s Insight
First‑year student Sofia Espindola de La Mora, originally from Puerto Rico, linked the program’s themes to her personal experience with increasing climate‑driven natural disasters at home. She observed that the degrowth movement does not advocate stagnation but critiques the relentless pursuit of more, which has precipitated many current ecological crises. The course prompted her to reconsider whether her current lifestyle could be sustained using renewable energy alone, ultimately steering her academic focus toward climate system science and engineering.
Professor Brown’s Educational Philosophy
Brown’s research sits at the intersection of history, science, technology, and bio‑politics, and she has long taught courses such as STS.038 (Risky Business: Food Production, Environment, and Health). For STS.S22, she prioritized a localized, community‑scale approach to climate challenges, arguing that solutions imposed from above often overlook the nuanced relationships between people and place. By grounding learning in Barcelona’s cooperative traditions, she aimed to show students that resilient futures emerge from everyday practices—shared meals, seed saving, and collective decision‑making—rather than solely from high‑tech interventions.
Ongoing Impact and Campus Community
Since returning to MIT, participants have sustained the bonds forged abroad, gathering weekly for “Barcelona‑style” dinners where each person contributes ingredients and co‑creates a meal. Macatantan reflected that the trip restored his faith in purposeful work, inspiring him to pursue research that translates knowledge into actionable guidance for communities facing consumption‑driven pressures. These continued gatherings embody the course’s lasting legacy: a living network of students committed to applying regenerative, cooperative principles in their future endeavors.
MISTI Perspective and Closing Thoughts
Alicia Goldstein Raun, associate director of MISTI and managing director of the MIT‑Spain Program, praised the Global Classroom model for demonstrating how learning transcends campus boundaries when students engage directly with local cultures and challenges. She noted that the initiative allowed participants to wrestle with global issues like climate change and degrowth while experiencing Spanish community life firsthand. For faculty interested in replicating such experiences, MISTI offers resources and support to design similar immersive, internationally‑focused courses. The Barcelona trip ultimately illustrated that sustainable resilience is cultivated not in isolated laboratories but in the shared soils, kitchens, and gardens of everyday communities.