Tulsans of the Year: Taylor Hanson is changing the conversation around the food we eat
It is Tulsans of the Year time at Tulsa World and we are looking back this year and looking at the people who have made the most impacts and today I’m here with Nicole Marshall Middleton she is our scene editor and she’s written two stories on two Tulsans of the year, the first one we’re going to talk about today is Taylor Hanson of the Hanson band, world famous band. But Nicole, this year Taylor is not being recognized for his music, what is it that he did this past year that makes him a Tulsan of the year?
We’re recognizing his contribution with Food on the Move, Taylor founded Food on the Move in 2014, so this is the 10th year, this is a big milestone for them and they’ve got a lot going on. Everybody recognizes him for his music around the world but this is something they may not know about and we thought that it’s doing something good for the community and we wanted to thank him for that. Food on the Move right now is working on a project called Food Home and it’s a multiphase project which includes an urban farm, a food hub, a community hun, and a market. He’s got a lot going on with Food on the Movie because the mission is not only to just feed Tulsans, it’s teaching Tulsans how to feed themselves. It’s big effort is food deserts and doing away with those in our community but it is also trying to change the conversation about how we get our food to have these local hubs in communities and in gardens and really bring to the table more local farmers and fresh foods because of the effect it has on our health. Keeping us out of the doctor’s office and unfortunately Oklahoma does not have a very good health record when it comes to children and hunger and food insecurity and he’s going to not only food deserts, that’s where there’s not a grocery store, but sometimes there’s not even a convenience store and trying to teach them what a vegetable looks like. It’s fun to hear how exciting it is and what a passion that he has for this. It made me tired to think about all the travel and the touring and then he’s got this whole other thing going on. That’s one thing about some of our Tulsan’s of the year – not only recognizing people who are doing new things it is recognizing people who can sustain good things. Obviously there is Circle Cinema, there is Taylor Hanson, recognizing the fact that he has done this for 10 years and it is still going strong is a big thing and we wanted to give him a shout out.
Absolutely! Thank you Nicole for your time.