MARSH Cooperative operates as a d.b.a. of Spark for the Arts, Inc., a 501(c)3 not-for-profit recognized by the Missouri Nonprofit Corporation Act and with its primary location in the State of Missouri.
MARSH is a bio-cultural laboratory located in Carondelet, St. Louis, MO. MARSH investigates and directly practices relational, substantive, and creative forms of social, economic, ecological, and cultural composition.
Spark Inc./MARSH’s purpose is to design and explore emergent models of human scaled generative social practices.
The organization achieves its purpose through:
- Creative/artistic projects, practices, performances, exhibitions, collaborations;
- Community engagement;
- Reciprocal education, workshops, conferences, forums, symposia, think tanks;
- Generative processes in the areas of food, energy, art, thought, collaboration, relationships, and physical space.
The MARSH Cooperative is a non-profit sliding scale grocery store, network of neighborhood farm lots, commercial kitchen, CSA, online catalog, and community gathering space. We combine the benefits of consumer, worker, and producer cooperatives to provide the highest quality food to anyone who chooses to participate, regardless of means. Our goal is to create a grassroots mutual-benefit food system that operates by principles of environmental justice, healthy food access, labor equity, and sustainability.
Everyone is welcome to shop at the sliding scale MARSH Grocery, 6917 S. Broadway, open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. We accept EBT and offer an extensive selection of affordable natural and organic bulk foods, produce, baked goods, prepared foods, frozen food, meat and dairy, herbs and spices, household, general groceries, and personal care.
Community events, including farm tours, pop-up dinners, workshops, readings, and music, are sponsored by MARSH throughout the year. Sign up to receive a weekly newsletter at the Grocery or via email.
Website: marshlife-art.org
Email: bioculturalist@gmail.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/MARSHlifeart
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marsh_stl/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Marshcoop?fan_landing=true
Phone: 314.649.3314
MARSH Grocery Cooperative
6917 S. Broadway, St. Louis, MO 63111
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Every community owes its existence and vitality to generations from around the world who contributed their hopes, dreams, values, ideals, beliefs, experiences, and energy to making the history that led to this moment. Some were/are brought here against their will, some are/were drawn to leave their distant homes in hope of a better life, and some have lives on and with this land for more generations than can be counted. Many people continue to impose their extractive and oppressive wills on this land and on others. Acknowledgments are critical to building mutual respect and collaboration. We offer this statement as a natal effort to learn about how and why we are standing on the ancestral lands of the Dhegiha peoples, including and related to the Wazhazhe (Osage), Kaw, Omaha, Ponca, Quapaw, Miami, Chicksaw, Illini, Ioway, Missouria, Otoe, and Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux) We honor and respect the many Indigenous people(s) still connected to this land on which we gather. We pay respects to elders past and present. We acknowledge the contemporary sovereignty of the Osage Nation. Before, during, and after our actions, we consider the affects, implications, and consequences of our practices and presences. We consider the the (ongoing) legacies of genocide, violence, extraction, displacement, migration, enslavement, and (re)settlement. We pledge to work against white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, ecocide, xenophobia, bigotry, and colonialism and towards a more livable,future for all forms of life inhabiting this land and this planet.
ABOUT THE FOUNDERS/ORGANIZERS
Co-founder Beth Neff was born in St. Louis county and sold her organic vegetable farm to return to St. Louis and found M.A.R.S.H. in 2017. Beth has devoted her career to social advocacy and organizing, primarily in the areas of food justice and sustainable agriculture, cooperative organization, and urban planning. She has been the executive director of two not-for-profit organizations, worked as the produce manager at her local store-front food co-op, organized a growers’ collaborative, founded a year-round indoor farmers market, teaches permaculture design classes, has consulted on numerous sustainable urban planning projects, and spent three years gathering city-wide input and writing the document for her city’s sustainable 10-Year Comprehensive Master Plan. Neff is also the author of the young adult novel, Getting Somewhere (Viking/Penguin, 2012). WEBSITE
Co-founder Esther Neff grew up home-schooled on her mother’s organic goat and vegetable farm in Indiana. She is currently living between St. Louis and Brooklyn, NY as an artist, organizer, and independent theorist. Her work has involved forms of performative institution and organization as well as the making of interdisciplinary performance projects. She is the founder and co-director of Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL), a flexible ensemble (experimental opera and performance art) and organizational entity. PPL operated out of and as a lab site in Brooklyn, 2012-2018. Esther is also the initiator of the Brooklyn International Performance Art Foundation (BIPAF), PERFORMANCY FORUM, and other collaborative “institution as a verb” projects including thinktanks, conferences, symposia, and other discursive/interactive/dialogic performances. Her work often involves forms of food-sharing in performance, devising and diagramming processes, tours/geographic relocations, and collective-formations. WEBSITE , tumblr/portfolio , IG
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