Foodmiles design competition winners win some JUICE

February 6, 2007

Image of judging panel used with non-tacit permission

Tuesday, one week ago today was devoted to a most ironic activity. I swam back and forth to London to jury the shortlisted entries of an international competition to find design solutions to the problem of foodmiles. And by swam, I mean flew. In an airplane. The competition was organised by the RSA (Royal Society of the Arts) and Dott 07 (Designs of the Time) and the prize was a trip to a design conference in New Delhi called JUICE.

In collaboration with Dott 07,the RSA Design Directions developed two student projects, each dealing with a specific sustainability challenge; food, and tourism. I was honoured to be a part of this international jury judging the food sustainability challenge. The idea was for designers to work collaboratively, and for non-designer team members to learn about the design process by working with designers.

It was fantastic that the seven shortlisted designers brought such a wide range of solutions to the table with their projects. Once the entrants have their projects online I will link to them from here, but here are brief descriptions of the 3 winning entries:

• Carbon Care (Wesley Richardson and Lisa Stockton from Ravenbourne College of Design and Communication
  Carbon Care is the design for an accredition and logistics system whereby food labeled with stickers at the moment of harvest accumulate foodmiles all the way to the point of sale. Consumers can trust this accreditation more than the numerous systems already in place because the actual distances will appear on the label and not represent merely an abstract concept of fairness, freshness or proximity.
• C02 Low (Lucy Denham from Northumbria University partnered with Fenwick Newcastle, a true northeast of England local department store)
  Although community supported agriculture (CSA) already offers wonderful solution for the reduction of foodmiles, as far as design competitions go, CSA box schemes are a dime a dozen. But in Denham’s C02 Low the boxes on sale at the (Fenwick) supermarkets were designed into menus, menus that even included traditional and heritage recipes. To be clear, the box that Denham designed with client/partner Fenwick is the recipe. I love this. In Denham’s January recipe boxes, the menu is even devoted to detoxing!
• Beeline (Dawn Danby, Jyoti Stephens, and Mary Rick, Bainbridge Graduate Institute, Washington US)
  The most interdisciplinary team in the competition designed a logistics system in which small farmers can plug their relatively small harvests into a food transportation network. The system is empowering for small farmers that usually don’t have access to largescale distribution systems, and thus miss out on increasing their market or getting their produce out to local supermarkets. Beeline lets farmers fill up the empty spaces in trucks already en route.
• The jury consisted of:
  Ulla Maria Mutaanen, Tony Dunne, Hilary Cottam, John Thackara, Dorothy MacKenzie, Ann Crawley, Susan Hewer and myself.

The winning Design Directions teams have been awarded a trip to participate in Doors of Perception 9 (JUICE) which takes place in India 1 – 5 March 2007. Later in 2007, the winning teams will participate in an international design summer camp at two (so far secret) locations in North East England. Here, the teams will further develop their food and sustainability ideas for these specific locations, working both with local partners and with design mentors organised by Dott 07. The results of the design camp will be featured at the Dott 07 Festival in October 2007 in Newcastle and Doors of Perception 10, which takes place during the festival. The best projects will be celebrated at the Creative Community Awards which concludes Dott 07.

• the RSA Design Directions Competition 2006-2007
• RSA Design Directions projects
• Dott 07 (Designs of the Time) blog

debra at 13:18 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us

DOTT07
(Designs of the time)
Urban Farming

January 27, 2007

Urban regeneration, edible grow zones, kitchen playgrounds and town meals

In many communities fresh fruit and vegetables are hard to source and expensive. There’s little awareness of local food production, the possibility of growing your own and next to no supply chain for existing producers and consumers. Cooking is increasingly evolving into the warming up of processed foods. Supermarkets become the sole suppliers of food to an entire region. Often, there’s an oversupply of multiple retailers. But also there’s often an oversupply of redundant, vacant land. Could communities be more self-sufficient in their food supply? Could this also connect with more sustainable land use and urban design?

In September 2007, Designs of the time (DOTT 07) will host a town meal in Middlesbrough in the North East of England. Attended by several hundred people, the meal will be generated from fruit, vegetable and livestock cultivated by those who live and work in the town using mobile, personalised and containerised kitchen or community gardens. The meal will be based upon recipes generated by the same people that grow the produce, working closely with a professionally staffed cooking facility cum kitchen playground, known as a ‘meal assembly center‚’

The Urban Farming project will be delivered by existing organisations, agencies and individuals in Middlesbrough. Some elements of the project are new – but many are already going on in the town operating under another name. Since the impulse is to create an enjoyable, sustainable, town-wide initiative, the project will engage with community groups, green-fingered schools, with community cafés, professional farmers, Finance Directors, hands-on mums and dads, hotel kitchen staff, the sales departments of local companies and coaching staff of Middlesbrough Fottball Club. They‚ll create their own gardens or ‘grow zones’ and bring their own food to the table.

What’s the opportunity for longer-term growing of food? How might urban agriculture in such a post-industrial community enable a more sustainable, zero-carbon economy? The project will chart the opportunity for permanent food-growing sites in the town in an opportunity map created by architects Bohn& Viljoen, designers at the forefront of creating what are known as ‘continuous productive urban landscapes’. The town’s new urban farmers will be mentored by a specially assembled team of local experts, made up of allotment holders, professional and amateur horticulturalists, students and domestic gods and goddesses who are already dab hands at growing food and are whisk-wielding wizards in the kitchen.

DOTT 07 is a year of art, design and community based projects devoted to enabling social innovation and make a positive difference to daily lives. Supported by the U.K. Design Council and regional economic development agency One North East, DOTT 07 seeks to enable new work by designers in real-life situations. In Middlesbrough, agriculture, well-being, design and land use are fusing to envisage a new, sustainable future for a place founded on heavy industry.

Senior Producer: David Barrie, http://www.dott07.com/go/public-commissions/city-farming
Service Design: Nina Belk, Zest Innovation, http://www.zestinnovation.co.uk
Domain Expert: Debra Solomon, http://www.culiblog.org

Middlesbrough UK 2006-2007
A joint initiative between One North East, the Design Council, agencies, organisations, employers, the Third Sector and the people of Middlesbrough, England.

debra at 9:25 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us

Liquid chauvinism,
drinking with Muslims

January 22, 2007

Buzzkill’s throwin’ a wrench in my terroir-ism.

From time to time a girlfriend coming over to dinner will burst in the door, plop down her big ‘ol handbag and announce with a performative voice loud enough for all to hear, ‘Oh, and I’ve stopped drinking!’

Pretty much always this means that Girlfriend has stopped drinking for the month of January, or that she’s trying to shed a kilo or two. I have never noticed that these temporary abstentions embrace extreme behaviours like refusing glasses of champagne. ‘Oh, and I only drink champagne!’ And cava and prosecco and cremant.

When this happens I don’t skip a beat. Ceremoniously and performatively I present non-drinking girlfriend with a wine glass full of water or try to make the tea feel fancier than it is. I then proceed to pour myself a wine glass full of wine and forget the matter entirely. Shortly thereafter dinner happens.

But what about the Boyfreund? This jewel of a gentleman dines (yet does not drink) here on an increasingly regular basis! Though his approach to his faith is chaotic and humanistic, (thank Gawd for that) it seems unlikely that he will start drinking beer any time soon like all the other Muslims I know.

He is emphatic about not ‘minding’ if I drink a glass with dinner, but when it’s just the two of us, it feels assymetrical for him to drink water while I enjoy my wine. No amount of hype can make a glass of Amsterdam tap water (deliciously filtered through the sand dunes though it is) seem auspicious and brimming with terroir as my perfect glass of red wine. If I were him, I’d totally lord my moral superiority over everyone at every possible moment. He’s obviously a better man than I could ever be and the opportunity to expand my repetoire of non-alcoholic adult drinks seems to present itself.

‘Oh, and I’m embracing the eradication of liquid chauvinism!’

• Sandor Ellix Katz writes about kefir and other fermented dairy drinks in his book Wild Fermentation.
• Wikipedia on kefir

debra at 14:26 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us