Located in Newtown, it adds to healthy and free food options.
By Jackson Rothman
Original Air Date: February 11, 2026
Host: Sarasota, meet the “freedge.” If you live in the neighborhoods in North Sarasota wedged between Tamiami Trail and US 301, you have to travel longer distances than fellow Sarasotans to find your groceries. One initiative in Newtown is trying to cover some of the gaps. Jackson Rothman reports.
William Russell, chief executive of the Sarasota Housing Authority, cuts the ribbon. Photo courtesy SHA
JR: In late January, officials from the Sarasota Housing Authority, alongside the Sarasota Police Community Relations Unit cut the ribbon on the first Community Fridge in Sarasota. The fridge, located at the Sarasota Housing Authority office on South Osprey Avenue in Newtown, is a public-access resource for members of the community struggling with food insecurity. The fridge is regularly stocked with fresh food and produce through donations to the Housing Authority from local grocery stores. Anyone can visit and take what they need. The project was spearheaded by Michelle Stears, Director of Resident Services at the Housing Authority, in partnership with the American Red Cross.
Community fridges, or “Freedges,” are refrigerators set up to provide healthy food options for underserved communities. The “Freedge” movement is gaining traction across the country but faces pushback over regulation in some regions. The fridges are not businesses, but food safety and health code enforcement remains a grey area.
The location of the fridge is not accidental and carries generational weight for Sarasota residents. The Community Fridge sits in Newtown, a historically Black neighborhood.
I spoke with Bianca Clyburn, aka Bianca Sel-Ket, a local artist who helped bring the project to life.
Bianca Clyburn
Bianca Clyburn: Hello. My name is Bianca Clyburn. As an artist, my name is Bianca Selket, which is just my middle name, but it feels cooler than Bianca Clyburn. I work as a teaching artist in Sarasota, part time with the Ringling Museum and full time with my own business which is called Art on Fire. I have been teaching with the Ringling Museum’s Teaching Artist Program since it started. One of the locations I go to is the Housing Authority.
JR: Newtown is a product of segregation. The neighborhood was established in 1914, designated specifically for people of color. While forced to live in separate neighborhoods, Black Sarasotans have been involved in the development of the city all the way back to its founding in 1885. The first Black Church opened in 1899, and the first formal school for Black children in 1912. In 2024, Newtown was entered in the National Register of Historic Places.
Newtown is in a food desert. That’s a term used to describe areas without or with limited access to healthy food. These areas are often associated with higher rates of poverty, and with health concerns related to lack of proper nutrition.
People in food deserts rely heavily on convenience stores and neighborhood shops, which usually carry more “shelf stable” options, such as bagged snacks, sodas and other highly processed foods. These areas are devoid of major grocery stores, forcing residents to venture far beyond their neighborhood to find healthier options, usually at higher costs.
Bianca works with students at the Ringling Museum, and teaches art in the community. She partners with places like Selby Gardens and the Leonard Reid House. Bianca, alongside students, lead the art direction for the Community Fridge.
BC: I work with up to elementary students—fifth grade at eldest—but I also sometimes work with adults too. The age is really indiscriminate. Everyone is a kid in an art class. They’re all fishes out of water and I have to coax them to do things.
Letting the kids help me paint that fridge, that person might now know that they are capable of painting a mural one day. I had to really force myself to accept the fact that I can do that because I’d never met anyone like me.
JR: Providing the option for free healthy food is not enough. Many people can feel shame in relying on a program such as this fridge to help feed themselves and their families. That’s why there is an anonymous pickup system that requires no registration ahead of a visit. People can take what they need and leave without being publicly identified, or marked in a database.
Additionally, Bianca made artistic choices to ensure everyone can feel dignified in their visit.
BC: I designed it to look like King Tut’s throne. I did that because I thought they put a lot of dignity in the model of it, where it’s pretty much anonymous. You don’t have to register or do anything that could potentially embarrass a person to not want to say they don’t have food. I thought that was powerful or empowering. On the side of it I put an African proverb, which is “No matter how little food we have, we share,” but I just put “No matter how little we have, we share” because the food is implied.
JR: As grocery prices continue to rise, local options like the Community Fridge have become invaluable resources to vulnerable communities.
BC: This fridge is putting a mirror up to Sarasota to show you how easy it is to do something kind and beautiful and artful. That literally, physically nourishes the same community. The funds are there. This is not a place that has that issue. It’s a matter of communicating with one another what we would like to do.
The desert is not just the food; it’s a desert in expression.
JR: The Community Fridge is part of a new crop of grocery options for Newtown residents. All Faiths Food Bank announced they will be opening Margie’s Market, a choice-style market offering fresh and more nutritional options for the neighborhood. The Market, which opens its doors in March, will be located inside the Goodwill Manasota Job Connection Center at MLK Way and North Osprey Avenue.
BC: Hopefully we’re witnessing the beginning of a new standard, because it’s not a huge stretch. It’s just a matter of saying that place is worthy of it and putting your money or your art where your mouth is.
JR: Reporting for WSLR, Jackson Rothman.
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