Turriff's on a sunny day...

tea and cake two

Another video, this one is based on the transcriptions from the conversations we had on Wednesday on the Perth Road. We had a really interesting croos section of people, some conflicting thoughts and opinions... one thing they all shared though was shopping in Tesco!

click here for video tea and cake 2

tea and cake

Ruth and I went out on Wednesday to have a cuppa and a chat with folk on the Perth Rd. We took out my old tea trolley from a previous project, as its a good way of having an informal, impromptu blether. The weather wasn't too bad, but there was a heavy shower about half way through which made the shortbread and banana bread that we'd made get a little soggy. We had some really interesting conversations, based loosely around access to local food. Here is a short video of the first chat we had...

click here for video...

tea and cake

allotment chat

Had an interesting chat with Joe at the allotment today. He's had his plot for 36 years and has seen a few changes. He reckons that "most people aren't prepared to do the work these days. They'll take on a plot like this one, all neat and tidy, but not like the one next door. But how do they think it gets like that? It doesn't happen by itself! Folk are just too lazy these days." We talked a bit about sustainability and climate change and he was telling me that over the years the growing season has shortened - in years past he would have been able to grow right into September, however now, by August, everything stops growing. He feels that people should give growing a chance, even if they don't know where to begin "I was just the same when I started. You learn by your mistakes, when someone comes and says 'don't do it like that', you think - do you know better? We all have to learn and we do it through our mistakes, its trial and error..." He gave me some advice about enticing worms into my plot (there has been a worrying lack since I took on the plot three years ago) and also showed me the best way to dig. Thanks Joe :)

new logo

a card to hand out tomorrow when we distribute apples tomorrow...

Inter-Group Collaboration

Today we were working on a collaboration with another group with similar beliefs and goals with regards to understanding, and hopefully altering consumer behaviour through awareness of local services and making these services more accessible to the public.

We hope that by combining our resources we can cover two of the major areas that our groups are concerned with. We have identified our major area of research as people, and barriers that stop consumers shopping locally. The other group are focusing on business, and trying to improve the communication between business to business and business to consumers.

This map below is some of the major topics that were covered in the discussion.

Interesting Project: The Community Chest

This project was one of my past team projects and the reason it worked really well was that we were able to implement the prototype and test and develop the design over time. 

The Community Chest was a project involving the town of Gauldry, Fife. The community could swap, add or remove items from the chest. Primarily old unwanted items were placed in the chest. This reuse of old items and giving them a new lease of life encouraged communication and recycling in the town through novel means.

The project was based upon designing for fictional users. The aim, through research, was to expand this small amount of information that was provided for the character. This has value because it enables design for users when regular contact with the group is impossible.

A small experiment in participatory prototyping was carried out with some members of the community to establish the ideal environment for the project to be placed in

A small video of the Community Chest in action

Pillars of Hercules: Bruce and Duncan

Here are two maps of Bruce and Duncan. Some thoughts and things trying to map out the two personalities. Bruce is the owner of the Pillars of Hercules, Fife. Duncan is the farm manager.

the four A's

The official definition of food security is "When all people, at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active healthy life." (World Food Summit, 1996)

The Local Action on Food network lists four main factors that effect food security - Accessibility, Availability, Affordability and Awareness which could be good themes to base our questioning about - ie. accessibility - where do you do your shopping? how do you get there? are there shops near you? what do they sell? click on the image below to see their site.


What's the story in Dundee? According to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, 28.5% of Dundee's population lies within the top 15% most deprived areas of the country. Also, the unemployment rate for the city is higher than the national average and 39% of children entering school are overweight or obese. The city also boasts the greatest square footage of supermarket space per person - is there a link here?

pillars of hercules videos

two short videos from our trip to pillars... thanks Duncan and Bruce :)

duncan
bruce

local suppliers

Turriff's farm shop and nursery in Broughty Ferry have been around for almost 50 years. They grow and sell a whole host of their own produce. When I visited last week they were selling their own peppers, kale, carrots and lettuce, supplemented by plenty of fruit and veg from local suppliers. They were selling off a load of their green tomatoes really cheaply - good for making tomato chutney. I spoke with the staff there and although they hadn't noticed a rise in demand for local food, they had witnessed an upsurge in people buying vegetable and fruit plants to grow at home.

In contrast, Clementine's is a new business, having only opened four months ago in Broughty Ferry. As a small grocers, they try to bridge the gap between providing locally grown produce with more exotic fare such as pineapples and kiwis. Co owner Carole is really passionate about food and has noticed that customers have a keen sense that something is wrong with the food we eat - although they don't always know what they should be doing differently, and are often confused by the difference between local, fair trade and organic. The parsley I bought (loose, no packaging) was from just up the road, on a previous visit they had bay leaves from a local garden - no fixed price, just a donation to charity.

Pillars of Hercules

We had a really interesting field trip this week to Pillars of Hercules organic farm in Fife. We were given a tour from Duncan the farm manager, who was really generous with his time. We heard about the history of the well established farm, shop and cafe; had a peek in the polytunnels; wandered through the orchards and ate some wholesome, hearty soup - yum. We were lucky enough to have a cuppa with the owner Bruce, who gave us an insight into the success of the place.

reflections

When we first came together having done our initial research, we found a common theme - that there is a lot going on in the realm of sustainable food, but that information isn't always easy to access. We were all quite excited at the idea of mapping local projects / organisations / businesses, in order to allow an easier exchange of information.

Upon reflection though I felt that maybe we needed to go back to first principles. What, for example, do we mean when we say 'sustainable food'? Is it - as outlined by the Fife Diet - when we eat more local and organic food, less meat, waste less and compost more? And what exactly would mapping Dundee's sustainable food network achieve? Who is it for? Why would we bother?

My thoughts are that it could help to:

1. raise awareness

2. increase local knowledge

3. encourage buying food from independent businesses rather than supermarkets

4. reduce food miles

5. connect people with the food they eat.

...but would it? It wouldn’t be particularly difficult to find out all the green food stuff and map it, but where does co-design fit in? Should we start by finding out what would help Dundonians to eat in a more sustainable way? Talking to the people who aren't engaged with this issue - about their food purchases and what stops them from buying local / organic / less packaging… is it cost / transport / lack of interest?

My feeling is that the map could be a way of raising awareness / initiating discussion, rather than an end point - a way of highlighting what the issues are for local people - what is working and what is missing.

Mood board, first week.

Our fist steps

Our initial work involved some desk research. We uncovered many different issues within the field of sustainability and food. Actually we uncovered that there were two massive areas that we could spend years covering different subjects.

 The overall theme that arose was that there is an imbalance between our culture and nature which is because our society uses more resources than nature can provide. It seems like a simple insight but it is one that is often overlooked. We then must aim to address the balance.

This lead us to create quite a narrow focus. We found that thee are many resources devoted to sustainability and even more devoted to food. More sustainable food systems exist within Scotland, but we had to dig deep to find out about them. This process uncovered some insights and knowledge that was only shared because of our involvement.

Our first concept was to create a green map for Dundee to combine as much sources of knowledge on sustainability in Dundee into one area using an existing network (www.greenmap.org)

Where do we begin? What is our outcome?

Like in many design briefs, you are thrown in at the deep end. Where do you start with food and sustainability, two enormous topics. We have tried to relate this to learning objectives and outcomes.

We have some clear goals

• To improve our research skills
• To develop our understanding of stakeholders.
• Finding out about people's relationship with food and sustainability

Our process can be seen in the diagram below:

This diagram represents the basic process that we have worked through, ignoring iterations and some cyclic processes.  We can see the ultimate goal on the far right: identifying stakeholders needs.

Introduction

Hi.

This is a blog to document and record the research process for this semester in an interdisciplinary masters course. This space contains all the knowledge we have gathered this year in relation to Sustainable Food Systems.

The work contained here is work in progress.