From Community Farming to Community Research

Enter the Goodman Community Farm — a community  space for ageing well.

Since 2019, Cultivate Central and the Goodman Arts Centre have nurtured the Goodman Community Farm as a shared community space. Here, permaculture practitioners, artists, seniors, and volunteers come together to grow, cook, make, and share. Through food, health, and art, the farm offers a place to connect — with nature and each other.

Over time, something important became visible. The activities taking place here — by, for, and with seniors — were organically supporting ageing well within a community

The Seniors Action for Greater Empowerment (SAGE) project by the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health noticed this too and invited leaders and seniors connected to the Goodman Community Farm to embark on a participatory action research (community research) journey together.

After a year of community research using methods such as asset mapping, photo-voice, participatory dialogues, workshop engagements and future mapping exercises our community researchers from the Goodman Community Farm are ready to present observations, insights and solutions not through a report but through the Living A Good Life Community Museum.

Our community museum holds stories, insights, tensions, photos, reflections, patterns and lived experiences captured and gathered through this participatory research process.

About the Living The Good Life Community Museum

Our community museum is a culmination of a year's work merging heartfelt photography, workshop engagements, future mapping exercises and community engagement by and with community researchers to ignite a rich conversation about "Living the Good Life," challenging us to reimagine ageing not as decline, but in tandem with community life that fosters resilience, deep belonging, purpose and endless creativity.

Co-organised by Cultivate Central and The Seniors Action for Greater Empowerment (SAGE) at NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, this community museum is inspired by seniors at The Goodman Community Farm. 

Community Researchers from the Goodman Community Farm dedicated 2025 to intensive co-production and community research focused on the crucial link between Community Connection & Health through Food in the Katong, Mountbatten and Joo Chiat neighbourhoods.

Our solution

The outcome of our year long community research is not a report but a photo exhibition. Walk with us through our photo exhibition as we share a year's worth of observations and insights exploring the questions:

How can permaculture spaces like The Goodman Community Farm foster community connection & health through food, nature and art with seniors in our neighbourhood?

Come and view our insights presented through a photo exhibition and explore our solution.

Following our future mapping process, we will leverage on existing connections to community assets and establish a collective effort in the neighbourhood. This effort will take the form of the - Kinship Collective, a community food initiative driven by, for, and with seniors.

Kinship Collective brings seniors and allies together to foster a healthy, hands-on, and community-powered neighbourhood food system.

We will work together, focusing on food, health, nature, and art, to achieve the following: reduce social isolation, enhance the motivation for communal cooking and growing, and promote healthier food choices.

Success, to us, looks like: More shared hands-on experiences together through cooking, growing, and making; less food waste; stronger intergenerational ties; purposeful and regenerative food-related roles and activities for seniors; and shared spaces that sustain connection to nature, culture and health — through food. 

In tandem with the Living the Good Life Community Museum we will also be conducting workshops at the Goodman Community Farm inspired by:

- produce grown by seniors,

- recipes from seniors and

- permaculture and syntropic cultivation methods. 

More details regarding both the Community Museum and the Workshops via the posters below. Public engagement/workshops: Saturday 24th & Saturday 31st January 2026. Join us and learn from the elders growing, cooking, making and working with nature at the Goodman Community Farm. 

Living the Good Life MuseumBotanic Beverage Workshop

Stick and Start Workshop

See you at the Goodman Community Farm!

Nova Nelson

Nova Nelson is a permaculture practitioner and consultant with over ten years of experience in Singapore and Malaysia. She is the founder of Cultivate Central, where she integrates permaculture, syntropic agroforestry, and community development to shape regenerative urban food systems. Nova leads the Goodman Community Farm, a demonstrative urban permaculture ecosystem connecting people to soil, food, and environmental stewardship. Certified in Sustainable Food Production and Processing from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, she consults on regenerative food initiatives and hosts Cultivating Change, a podcast exploring food systems and regenerative farmers, communities and cultures across Southeast Asia.

How did I find myself doing what I do? Read my story here.