Dish the Dirt: Cultural Food Change

Dish the Dirt

GABBY MORRIS

TRANSITIONING TO A NEW FOOD CULTURE IN SCOTLAND THROUGH EXPERIENCE DESIGN.

My objective for this project was to research and investigate how a new culture could be developed around food in Scotland.

Focusing on developing a future culture that could change the food system and the way people consume food, particularly in Urban areas of Scotland.

My brief was to design a way for people to connect to food differently and to develop a culture centred around Scotland and food produced in Scotland.

This project is a self-initiated project that asks me to develop my own brief, plan and run my own project from start to finish in a topic of interest.

The project lasted 12 weeks, we were asked to use our skills and knowledge from the last 4 years at the Glasgow School of Art to develop a brief and design an outcome.

This project has been a way to reflect on my own skills and practice as a designer.

Gabby Morris

Understanding and reflecting on different people in Scotland, their values and relationships around food today and supporting the transition to something different in the future. Drawing on the principles of transition design, speculative design and food design to create a stepping stone towards a better food culture.

This project brief was conceived from my dissertation conclusion, which made me consider the narratives and language around food and how we need to change those in order to aid food system change.

SEMESTER 2 INDIVIDUAL 12 WEEK Thanks to my tutor and supervisor for this project Zoe Prosser.

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Project Launch Creating the brief 06

Understand Desk Research

Food narratives, cultures and design

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NORDIC FOOD

Key Insight

A blueprint for cultural food change

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Expert Input 1 Getting feedback from 4 experts

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Explore Place-based research Heading out to Highlands and Islands

Define Cultural Insights

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Key Insights from intial research

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Fridges of Scotland Cultural Probe to understand what people eat

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Key Insight

Ideate

Contents

Future’s Research Exploring what the future of food might be

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Provotyping Developing provotypes for food cultures

Key Opportunity

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Design Opportunity A culture around the terroir of food?

Create

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Developing an experience

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Engaging with food and soil in fine dining

Co-design

Testing an experience

130 -142

Running a prototype experience

Expert input 2

Iterate Iterating an experience Developing my concept further

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Final Outcomes Dish the Dirt in Scotland

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Reflection

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Project Summary The project brief came from my dissertation, which honed in on the narratives of our food past and the cyclical nature of food redesign. I did considerable research from the Victorian era to the present day and realised that food system change had been a constant in our history. Our empirical past has meant that food in the UK has always been different from other European nations.

Although people have tried to change it throughout history, our culture around food needs new narratives.

My dissertation conclusion put forward the idea of changing narratives in the future and using that narrative change to impact food systems for the better. I decided for this self-initiated project that I would take on that task. I have always been interested in food systems from a design point of view and from previously working in food manufacturing in the UK. I am endlessly fascinated by how food is embedded into our lives, from the three meals a day most people eat to the language we use daily. Yet, it holds very little value today. Most people do not understand the impact that their food choices have on themselves, society, and the environment. Today, most of our food culture is not a healthy one for any of these.

I chose to create a brief that would hopefully help me understand more about the present day from ordinary people’s perspectives. I wanted to understand more about not just the theory I had read about in 6

my dissertations but the honest opinions, values and behaviours associated with food on an everyday basis. This felt like a good starting point to understanding how to change and form new cultures.

I created the brief to be open; like culture itself, I wanted to develop a brief that would allow me to organically research.

And ultimately navigate my way through food narratives, language, buying habits, experiences, values and anything else that I could come across. I focused my brief on Scotland rather than the whole of the UK. My brief statement question was to “Design new narratives that could aid food system change.”

Real Food - Martin Parr, Weston-Super-Mare, 1998 // Magnum Photos 7

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Project Lens Food

SELF INITIATED BRIEF

Cultures

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Relationships

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How does valuing food change food culture?

How does taste and the senses make a difference to the food people choose?

What are cultural narratives around food that could change?

What is the difference between what people say locally about food versus government policy

Food Culture and the Value of Food

How does where people shop make a difference to what they value?

Food and farming, how are people connected to food in different locations in Scotland

How does language and stories around food change the culture and value of food?

Initial brainstorm of ideas around Food Culture and the value of food to develop my project context.

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Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who are you.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

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UNDERSTAND PHASE

Desk Research Kicking off this project I was keen to understand more about food cultures, narratives and the ways people have designed around these topics. I had a lot of information about the food system and I wanted to understand more about how culture plays a role in that system.

that were taking place. I was interested in understanding what ways people design around cultures, engage in cultures and find out how to change them. I used some of my desk research time to find projects that aligned with what I was trying to do on this project to give my project more context.

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE As a designer, it was vital for me to understand how systems, services and cultures exist in the present day to think about what they could be in 2031. When approaching a future-based project, I think it is helpful to understand the trends that might come along and the present and the past. Ultimately ten years in the future is not an overly long time; it is difficult to predict how much or little will change.

History will always come along in some form, and the present will also influence it.

As part of my desk research I looked at futures based designs around food cultures, and tried to understand about the present day too.

PROJECT POSITIONING I wanted to make sure that I positioned my project with context of different designs 16

LANGUAGES AND CULTURE One of the first things that really stood out for me during the research phase was the concept of language and culture. I found lots of interesting insights about future languages, designing for new languages and how language can influence what we think about our experiences.

I came across a project called ‘The Common Table’ which I found really inspiring, it was a newly designed set of words for the future of talking about food.

I realised at this point that I needed to understand more about the local food languages in order to piece together a deep understanding of the food cultures in Glasgow and Scotland.

Collection of desk-based research

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Mapping the interconnectedness of Food Cultures to get an understanding of everything that affects them

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From the mapping of the interconnectedness of Food Cultures, it became apparent to me that they could be categorised into different layers and I decided to break down these layers as a framework for further research.

What are people saying?

Both local and online cultures are put out almost as a Facade, I wanted to understand what people are saying about food, what food people are eating and bringing into their homes. This layer I felt would be the richest in understanding why we have the food culture we have in Scotland.

The online culture of food Local Food Language Understanding how people describe food locally and how that changes across an area like Glasgow. This was important for my research phase in order to understand how people are talking about food, how people shop for food locally and how different areas change that relationship to food. Are there smaller food cultures in different places?

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Here I wanted to understand how people talk about food and share food online. this demographic might be younger than the local shopping demographics and I wanted to understand how that might affect the language and culture online of food. Digital cultures shape a lot of the way we live in society so it was important for my research to understand this carefully and analyse how it differs or matches local cultures.

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Nordic Food

Manifesto

INSIGHT 1 A key part of the process for developing and disseminating the ideas from this manifesto were living labs with citizens, chefs and food policymakers.

I considered this to be a really valuable approach and made me consider who would need to be involved in redesigning a food culture in Scotland.

During my desk research I came across the concept of the Nordic Food Manifesto. I chose to look at the Nordic Food manifesto because it is the only example of large scale deliberate cultural food change done by nations in the world. I felt it would really inform my research and give context to my idea about changing food cultures. It covers most of my research layers and directly impacts local and people. The Nordic Food Manifesto was a collective effort by the Nordic countries to change the food in Scandinavia. I was really inspired by the idea that they changed their culture and their cuisines. This manifesto afforded me some early insights that I used going forward in my project.

INSIGHT 2 They used a cross-cultural approach to the Nordic food change bringing together people from cooking, food, fishing, craftspeople, politicians etc. to make it happen.

Instead of looking at it from a silo point of view they made sure that all the parts of the food system were represented, even things not necessarily directly related to eating.

INSIGHT 3 Their manifesto was not about removing things from the system like Livestock, but looking at ways of making this system more regenerative. They focused on the ways people get food from the sea, land and the wild and brought those practices into the manifesto.

INSIGHT 4 They developed a pride around food, they created a demand for good modern food and helped people understand it, gain knowledge about it and linked in to their health and well-being strategies. People were brought on the journey, rather than it just being implemented to them.

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Language Fieldwork To understand more about language in our present day and local areas, I conducted fieldwork across Glasgow to look at the different food based language being used.

I photographed shop fronts, menus, products inside shops and them mapped them to categories of language (see following pages) I then developed unique language codes for each area so I could visually see how different areas use different language. It also helped me to map out the similarities in food language and food cultures across the city.

I wanted to understand how that language is different in the digital world as well, so I did the same mapping from places like Instagram - taking hashtags like ‘GlasgowFood’ and ‘GlasgowFoodie’ to see how people talked about food differently. I then mapped that using the same language codes.

Language is an important layer in people’s culture, it is a way that people express culture and the meaning in their cultures.

Reflecting on the Nordic Food Manifesto and the desk research I had done, I felt it was important to understand Glasgow’s culture and how people talk about food.

Without knowing this layer there is no way to work out how to express changes.

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This exercise was really useful in seeing the different layers of language that is used in food, I found it insightful and it helped me to build up a bigger picture of how language plays into our culture.

Two photos taken in Anniesland and Partick showing the different ways food is displayed and marketed.

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Mapping the Language found in different physical areas around Glasgow

Each cluster of images represents different areas in Glasgow

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These are headings that I created after synthesising all the language I found on my field trip around Glasgow. Taking information from these images I decided on categories or tribes from each area.

To view this in more detail please visit my miro board: https://miro.com/app/board/ uXjVONoVu1k=/?moveToWidget=3458764518813836582&cot=14

This map shows the similarities and differences across different areas - each line symbolises language from the categories.

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Language Codes

Edibles

Words or phrases like “vegetables”, “bread ”, “sandwiches”

Quality

Words or phrases like “superior” “deluxe” “the

best”

From the data collected (on previous pages), I created language codes.

These codes are coloured based on the tribes, the size shows how much of that language is being used. I took the language from everything in the area related to food i.e. shops, restaurants, cafés etc.

I took photos of the shop signage, the menus and the signage on the inside. then collated this information and synthesised it into categories for each type of language used.

Size determines the amount language is used

Hedonism

Words or phrases like “guilty” “pleasure” “delightful” “naughty”

Flavour

Words or phrases like “fresh” “taste” “tasty”

“delicious”

Time

Words or phrases like “express” “daily” “snacks” “to-

go”

Locality

Words or phrases like “Grampian” “nation’s” “world’s” “Scottish” “Local”

Eating Experience

Words or phrases like “Bistro”

“Cafe” “Diner”

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DENNISTOUN Dennistoun is more up and coming in the East End and was more similar to Partick, there was still a mix of older food establishments with new hipster places.

Here there was more talk of fresh, hedonistic type eating like in Partick. It was very different to Bridgeton the neighbouring place.

Language codes helped to show the differences and similarities between places and their food offerings. Very easily using colour and size I was able to develop an visual language for each area.

These insights helped me to think more about the cultures in these places and what different people want / need and choose in terms of the food they eat.

I wanted to understand how this differed in an online space to a physical space so I decided to repeat the same thing again using the same codes, but finding my research on social media.

ANNIESLAND You can see from the language codes here that there is little food in ANNIESLAND compared to other parts of the westend of Glasgow. The main types of language being used is around convenience and time as opposed to other more wealthier areas where food is being described in more hedonistic lifestyle terms.

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PARTICK The language here is more about hedonism and delightful eating, there was a lot more description of the types of places you might be eating at for instance ‘Bistro’ or ‘Cafe’. This was very different from places like Anniesland that focused on convenience and time.

BRIDGETON Similar to Anniesland in the West End, Bridgeton had very little food places and what there was simply focused on convenience food and express eating.

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ONLINE I did the same online looking at the way different hashtags and accounts talked about food. Even though not physical locations lots of the HASHTAGS are about physical areas and these gave me a lot of understanding about how different the culture is online to in physical settings.

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GLASGOW FOOD GUIDE From my mapping, it was very clear that online is a lot more about excitement, hedonism, delighting people with food rather than necessarily talking about fresh or quality ingrdients.

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Expert Input Day 1 The first expert input day came around fast, and I felt like I didn’t have a lot of research summary to show the experts about my project.

I had done some fieldwork, but my process starts with a considerable amount of research and trying to understand why people, in particular, behave in a certain way or value certain things over others.

However, I showed my thoughts and some of the research I already had. It did prove helpful in bringing up more questions about where my project was heading and what I should consider researching further.

One of the main points was about

Think about class and colonialism, how do these things affect food culture in Scotland and the UK? How do they affect taste and what we eat, it’s very different to places like France or Spain, why?

- Micheal Johnson 34

People, especially those in cities just don’t understand where their food comes from. They don’t understand Scottish farming or what is happening on the land outside of the city.

- Lynn Sayers McHattie

the past: how has food changed over the decades? How our empirical history has made our food system different from comparable nations?

I felt this was interesting and fitted with some of my knowledge from my dissertation that informed this project. Still, I decided that I would need to go deeper into the changes we have experienced and how people engage with food in Scotland.

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Reflection I was at an early stage of the project, and at this point, I still felt like I hadn’t found a real opportunity or way forward for an outcome to emerge. I went back to my research layers and the information from my expert input days to plan where to research next.

One of the critical things I needed to do for my research layers was to focus on people and what they think, say and do about food in Scotland.

I decided that I needed to access people in different parts of Scotland and particularly on the West Coast, to make comparisons.

I was curious to understand what people said about food and what people were eating. When we read and research, it is easy to theorise or imagine these things as a designer.

Especially having completed a dissertation on food culture, I felt that I had a lot of information in terms of theory. However, I was keen to test that theory and better understand how people engage with our food system.

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EXPLORE PHASE

Place-based Research One of the pieces of advice from the expert input session was to understand more about how food culture plays out in different areas. Going beyond just thinking about language, but exploring the different stories around food and the differences or similarities of areas in close proximity.

I started to consider what how the West Coast of Scotland might differ from other parts of Scotland - diet is always said to be the worst in this part. I also wanted to know more about the areas within this one place, I went on several field trips to speak to people in the street, ask people questions in cafés and map different parts of food culture.

Interviewing on the Isle of Bute

INSIGHT FROM BUTE Even though Bute is an island and I imagined that Island living would be healthier in terms of food choices, I found that on the Isle of Bute in particular there was very little food choice, people didn’t know what good food cultures looked like. Most of the food was very focused on quick, processed or fried foods but some people described that as healthy!

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On Location Map

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Researching the past

UK FOOD HAS BEEN FROM ABROAD SINCE 1892 The food that we think of as “British” food and what people often refer to when thinking about the past and going back to it, is actually from parts of the Empire.

Even food items that have been ubiquitous in different UK recipes like Corned Beef or Bacon have previously come from other countries. Even during the war, which is often seen as the time of “digging for victory” and Britain feeding itself, we didn’t. This insights made me reconsider what a future food culture might be like, it is most probably going to be very different to the past but we would probably still need to rely on food from abroad.

I decided to look into what food that we eat today in Scotland is part of our past cultures and what have been left behind. I began researching the different breeds of vegetables, the types of dishes - like Cullen Skink and Smoked Salmon - that people may have left behind in their daily meals.

As part of my research I found the book “Eggs of Anarchy” about food during the war, I decided to start reading it for insights into how food has changed. I knew from my dissertation that we often think today’s food and cultures are unique or new but they often come from the past or are at least influenced by it.

The war was the only time that food was equal in the UK and the culture of food dramatically changed. It was also the only time in history that nutrition was taken into account of people’s diets and what they can eat, for example in rationing people were given the exact amount they needed to live. I wanted to understand more about what happened to food in the UK during the war and also understand our reliance on the empire and colonialism, which food is often now impact by still.

My research into the past also included areas of Glasgow and what people were eating in different parts of the city before 40

An example of a leek no longer cultivated in Scotland

Another piece of feedback from the Expert Input Day was to consider the past of our food cultures.

things like Tesco and Deliveroo came onto the scene.

Researching the past made me realise that a lot of the problems we have today are very similar to what we had back then, a lot of the culture around food has changed but people’s opinions of food haven’t.

NUTRITION WAS MUCH BETTER UNDERSTOOD THEN Another key insight from this book was around Nutrition, even during the war and times of rationing people’s diets were dictated based on the nutritional value of the food.

This insight made me think about what food choices might be like now if we had to focus on consumption based solely on the right nutrients. It made me think about the present culture of consumption and how many empty calories we must eat in the UK and around the world.

During my research of the past I also uncovered a range of heritage vegetables that are native to Scotland and grow the best in Scotland that are now not produced.

The knowledge that certain varieties have been bred out of existence for reasons such as “needing higher yields’ ‘not producing flavour’ and ‘not being the same variety that supermarkets want’ was an interesting piece of knowledge for this project. I attended a workshop with the Seed Library about heritage varieties to understand more about why we don’t cultivate more that are good for Scotland.

It was clear that a lot of varieties are simply not what supermarkets or shops want, rather than what is nutritionally best or best for Scotland.

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Present Cultures After researching about the present, I felt it was important to define food culture, in order to continue researching it.

I chose to define Food Culture as: “THE ATTITUDES, BELIEFS AND PRACTICES THAT SURROUND THE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF FOOD.” I would use this definition going forward through my project and engaging with people.

I knew it would be useful to understand the landscape of the present issues with the food system and culture/narratives around it. I made a small map of some of the key narratives in the system and then mapped them to the problems (see left). This gave me a view of some of the narratives that could potentially be changed with a new culture!

Mapping narratives onto the current food system to understand the culture we currently have

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Food in the Home One of the things that was really important for this project was understanding ordinary people’s food culture and food narratives. I wanted to access people who did not work in the food system to understand their experiences.

I created “What’s in your fridge” and got people to send photos of their fridge contents and describe the food they were eating. I asked them to describe what Good Food meant to them too.

I left the cards around Glasgow, on the Islands that I travelled to and digitally in forums (see following pages).

This cultural probe gave me the most insights into everyday eating habits, what people described their food as and then what people were eating.

Illustration for my cultural probe

I decided to develop a cultural probe that people could do in their home and that would give me access to these stories.

The key insight that came out of this was that there was a dichotomy in terms of how people described their food and what the photos of their food described. For instance, lots of people described their food as back to nature, fresh and healthy and their fridge photos included a lot of pre-packaged, processed foods. This was the most insightful part of the research so far and cemented the idea that there could be a cultural shift here to change the food system. I decided to explore this further in my project.

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Fridge Cultural Probe survey using JotForm

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I mapped the fridges in different ways to each other to understand similarities and differences across Scotland. Again this was a really useful process because I started to see how similar food culture is, even on places like the Isle of Mull people still had similar cultures.

How people described their fridges was very similar too, the words “Fresh” and “Healthy” were the most used words to describe them.

Seeing inside people’s fridges and having access to how ordinary citizens described food was really useful in terms of piecing together the present day culture, it was also surprising how many people ate the same food and had the same produce in their fridges. I was interested to understand more about whether this was choice or because of the way we purchase food.

No-one from the people who submitted fridges purchased their food from anywhere other than one of the big 4 supermarkets and small local supermarkets like Locavore or Ashby’s.

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Leaving my cultural probe in digital forms using Facebook and Reddit forums

Leaving my cultural probe cards around the city of Glasgow

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A snapshot sample of the fridges I received from around Scotland. Everywhere from Glasgow to Isle of Mull from Edinburgh to the Black Isle. People submitted their fridges and described the contents as well as what good food was to them.

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INSIGHT 3: PROCESSED FOOD CULTURE Processed foods were more common in Glasgow and Edinburgh than on the islands and in rural places. However, most people even those that said their food was ‘healthy’ or ‘back to nature’ had processed foods in their fridge.

This shows how much processing foods has become a normal part of our culture in the UK

INSIGHT 2 : TREND CULTURE More dairy-free or alternative meats were in the contents lists from people in the city than in rural areas. Veganism was listed in the city more as good food than rural places.

This could suggest that younger, inner-city trends dictate the way people are eating rather than larger scale changes to culture.

INSIGHT 1 : SUPERMARKET CULTURE Fridges are often defined by supermarket cultures i.e. own label products that people can get. They are also defined by class because of the relationship that we have between class and supermarkets in the UK. Some people felt happy to put where they shopped whereas others didn’t want to disclose their shop of choice.

To view this in more detail please visit my miro board: https://miro.com/app/board/ uXjVONoVu1k=/?moveToWidget=3458764520079363620&cot=14 52

Mapping the different fridges across Scotland, I tried to show similarities and differences between them

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Mapping the different food cultures found in people’s fridges

Finding connections and relationships within people’s fridges

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Mapping the different fridge descriptions

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KEY INSIGHT: FRESH / HEALTHY This map shows the majority of words used by people who submitted their fridges, Fresh, Healthy and Tasty were the most used. However, this is a key insight because these descriptions don’t necessarily match up with the contents of people’s fridges, lots of people who used these words had processed, supermarket food in their fridges. Neither of which is fresh or particularly healthy.

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Good Food Nation Bill To understand more about the present culture around food and changes to the Scottish Food Culture I researched more into the only National Level food change I could find, “The Good Food Nation Bill”. This is a key piece of legislation that people have been calling for since 2014.

The bill itself did not throw up a lot about the culture, however I went through the responses to the bill and found answers to the consultation the Scottish Government had put out as part of this legislation. This was useful to understand what people are thinking about cultural changes to food at this level. There were few responses from ordinary people, most of the responses were from organisations.

The key responses though focused on:

- The Right to Food - Access to Land - Healthy Eating - Feeding the Poor These insights were useful to my understanding of what people wanted a cultural shift to focus on. It showed me that given the opportunity, feeding everyone and doing that using land would be the biggest priority. I also considered, after seeing the dichotomy inside people’s fridges if there would be a consensus on what is healthy eating.

This part of my research made me consider more about what would need to change to make a culture different here in Scotland.

It started to feel overwhelmingly like the only way to change would be through large systemic measures.

- Farming Practices 60

Screen Capture from https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/good-food-nation-Scotland-bill

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INSIGHT

Cultural Insights From all my research, these were the key insights that I decided to take forward for my project. They laid the foundation of the next phase of the project.

I took these insights and broke them down into the Iceberg Model (see next page), this project’s focus is within the Mental Modes and the Patterns section of the model. I used the research knowledge I now had to think about what they look like and to think about a design opportunity that could unpick some of the mental mode elements.

I knew that systemic change was too big for the scope of this project, so drawing on the concepts of Transition Design I started to think about what small shocks or ideas could be altered in our culture to move us from an in-between phase. Not changing the food system entirely but transitioning us closer to something better. The Iceberg Model helps to see what those transitioning patterns and trends might be, what is missing and what can be designed into the system to change the mental modes.

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People’s fridge conten ts were very different to what people described as their food or what they described as “G ood Food”

is Most shopping centred around en on supermarkets, ev the remote places in cotland West Coast of S ed from food is purchas the local Coop!

Most people described their food as healthy, fresh, back to nature .

This felt like what people feel they are expected to say, but a lot of the contents wa s pre-packed or proces sed foods. There’s a missi ng link between what fo od actually is.

ss diet acro ilar ’s le p o e P im is very s Scotland le few peop y r e v d an from out food b a d e lk ta ge ’s herita Scotland

Most of the research around present day cultures focused on changing the land access or growing more food, but people’s fridges were abundant with food. It didn’t feel like there is a need for more food

Very few people talked about nutrient values or choosing good food based on the nutritional element, unlike the past where food was rationed based on this, few people seem to acknowledge that’s why we are eating food.

ng ad a stro h le p o e P ey f what th hy notion o as “Healt w t h g u tho is didn’t h t ” g n i t Ea atch and always m ’t explain idn people d ht it was g u o h t y why the food. healthy

Packaged and processed food was the most common food group found in people’s fridges.

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MY DEVELOPMENT FOCUS

Finding a way to help people understand where their food comes from

Showing what real healthy food is and what nutrients mean for food

Exposing the connection of where food is grown and what that means in terms of the food we eat

Mapping cultural insights and research on the Iceberg Model. Adapted from the Iceberg Model

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Reflection At this point in my process I was still unsure what all these elements and development opportunities would lead to. It is very hard in projects like this one to not constantly go back to the systemic changes that need to take place, how people should just know more, how curriculum’s should change.

I was keen as part of this project to make something more experiential and focus more on the context of changing a culture, making people think and feel differently.

I decided that to try and think more provocatively and more creatively I would use some future’s thinking tools as part of my next design process.

At the same time I had a tutorial and was given advice to simply play with ideas, this is what I did for a full week of this project.

Stepping out of my research phase and into simply playing with concepts and future ideas.

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Futures Thinking I wanted to think about the future of food culture in order to take it away from systemic change. I decided that it would be good to develop some future provocations and think about how to challenge people with a design about what the future could end up like.

Over the years of this course I have been inspired by designers that make provocative exhibitions, experiences or speculative design that makes people think and feel. I wanted to think about using some of those skills like Speculative making in order to push my design ideas towards this style.

In Bompass and Parr’s Imminent Future they predicted concepts of eating earth and clay for health, but I wondered if this might become a trend because of the amount of process food we consume. If people continue to think this is a healthy way of eating they might have to eat clay and soils in the future in order to gain nutrients, if there is any left in the land!

It was at this point I started to think about what the design opportunity could be to bridge the gap between the insights of people not knowing about food or not knowing where food came from. It was at this point that land started to feel like an interesting opportunity to explore.

Whilst developing different provocations, I created STEEEPECS Cards to document the trends that are affecting food in the present and future.

I read a range of different text that inspired me as well, from Bompass and Parr’s imminent future to a blog about Food Fraud from a farm in Scotland (see next pages). These texts influenced some of my provocations and my understanding of where food is heading in the future.

In particular, I started to consider more about the earth and the land, that keep coming up in my Iceberg Modelling and insights from others, I felt it was an interesting fit for trying to get people to understand more about food.

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I started to try and understand more about the earth and land and our perceptions of it. I found Earthrise Studio’s information really interesting and their provocations through words.

This statement fitted well with my idea of changing a culture through narratives and storytelling.

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Bompass and Parr talked about the Geophagy for Health in this report, I found this really interesting in terms of the link to food. Food comes from the earth and is nutrient dense depending on where it is grown and how it is grown, I found that knowledge in my research. So if people continue to eat food that is poorly grown, made in a conventional farming way or eat pre-packaged and processes food, we might have to eat the soil directly.

I felt that this was a really good opportunity to develop a provocation around eating the soil and using the soil to help people make connections.

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These ideas and concepts led me to think about how to provoke thought and make people aware of them. I wanted to create some provocations that would highlight some of the things I had been reading. Many of my research insights started to come together. I could see patterns emerging; for example, people talk about healthy food when it is processed, but supermarkets fraudulently describe food as healthy or fresh when it isn’t. This pattern was a crucial link in our food cultural history. In the present day it is now being broken.

What people believe is not necessarily authentic and old narratives no longer make sense. People are not equipped with enough knowledge to challenge these notions or understand what is happening or identify something better.

At the same time I came across this from Piper’s Farm in Scotland talking about how food is not always as it seems when we buy it. Food Fraud and using terms like ‘Organic’, ‘Natural’ and even ‘British’ when they were not actually those things were on the rise. This made me think about how people can unpick these narratives and the culture of consumerism around food, how do people trust what they eat?

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Designing Provotypes I decided to take forward this idea of the soil and earth and develop some provotypes around it.

I wanted to provoke thought about eating soil and the nutrients of the future, so I developed three different ways to consume soil and brand around it. The idea of this provocation was similar to that of whisky, where something becomes a luxury and people will pay for it.

In the future, from my research I predicted that nutrients would become a luxury and that soil from places around the world would become collectors items, or precious things to consume.

I created a Soil Caviar, which was 12 years aged and came from Loch Tay. In my future, Scotland would become an exporter of highend soil and like Whisky it would become part of our culture.

The next page shows some of those products that I created as provotypes.

I then sent photos of them, put them on Instagram and asked people to view them to gauge what people’s reactions might be.

Most people were intrigued by this concept and it made them think and talk more about food in the soil.

I knew at this stage in the project that taking this concept further for my final concept would be the best way to develop a new culture. I wanted to think beyond just these provocations and develop something around the terroir and soil of the future.

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Sketches of my provocations

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I chose to create this provocation because of the Bompass and Parr’s insight about the future - that we might be eating more soils and clays for health. I approached this slightly differently. What if we have to eat soil and clays because what we believe to be healthy food in our fridges is devoid of nutrients and health. From my desk research and insights, I felt there was a growing pattern that food isn’t always what we believe it is, and in the future, we might have to eat things like soil to get the nutrients we need.

I had other provocations, including things like ‘Food Culture as Data’, but I felt that the most visceral provocation was the soil in this format. I showed people this provotype and put it on Instagram to get feedback; people were interested in this concept, but also it sparked a conversation about soils and food. A reaction to this made people think differently about food, and it was an excellent way to engage people in discussions about food and nutrients.

My Soil Provocations

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Bringing it all together

This map shows how all the key insights from my research phase culminated in an outcome and opportunity to take forward (see next page)

KEY INSIGHT DESK RESEARCH

FRIDGE RESEARCH

Food has been turned into a commodity people sell and use marketing to hide the way the system works from the consumer

KEY PROBLEM STATEMENT

People believe the food they are eating is very different. Scottish Food Culture is broken and people are not aware where food comes from

For food culture to change, new narratives need to be created around where food comes from and why we need to eat certain nutrient dense food.

KEY OPPORTUNITY

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KEY INSIGHT FUTURE’S THINKING

PROVOCATIONS

Future food culture might not be about eating food, it might be about eating nutrients i.e. eating the land that food comes from because manufactured foods have no nutrients left.

KEY PROVOCATION / SPECULATIVE IMPACT

People have little understanding of the relationship food has to the ground it is grown in.

Would people eat soil if that was the only way to get nutrients? Do people even understand how nutrients is transferred to food, can they be provoked to know more?

Designing a way for a new narrative to develop that links food and the land it is grown in. This would ultimately lead to new cultures around food in Scotland

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Insights and Opportunity INGREDIENT

MY DESIGN OPPORTUNITY

A CULTURE AROUND TERROIR OF FOOD

CONSUMER

- Make more robust food choices - More resistant to marketing - Choosing real quality Food I had decided at this point that my design opportunity for development was the concept of ‘Terroir’ and land based knowledge in order to create a new culture for Scotland. I wanted to design a way for people to think differently about soil and food. I decided that a good way would be to create an experience that people could come to. Using references of workshops, fine dining and the work of experience designers like Bompass and Parr, I decided to start developing a tasting experience.

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- Where food comes from - Appreciation of food - Valuing Nutrients not just food

- Food Knowledge - Good versus Poor Food - Quality Food

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My lens for the project shifted slightly with how my research had guided me. I realised that I was looking at food and cultures, but actually in trying to create a design that transitions people towards a new culture I needed to alter the lens of the project.

Food at the top Food is the most important stakeholder in this project, aiding food system change through a new culture in Scotland.

Food

The ideal outcome A piece of transition design that allows a new culture to form in Scotland.

Making connections Finding and designing connections between people, but also between food and land in order to create new communities both human and non-human.

CHANGING CULTURES IN SCOTLAND

Land

Relationships

Connection to Land Connecting food and land to help people understand and appreciate where their food comes from. To support a sense of pride about food in Scotland, connected to our place.

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Regenerative Designer During this project, I read more about Regenerative design and being a regenerative designer. Designers at Space 10 in Copenhagen, talk about how the regenerative designer seeks not merely to do less harm when designing but rather to put innovation to work as a positive force that restores, renews or revitalises.

Unlike just being sustainable or circular in the approach, it is about using design to transition us to a more restored society and the planet.

In the context of my project, I have thought about regenerative design in the materials I use in the workshops, how I engage people with how to change food and land, and having non-human stakeholders like the soil and soil biota.

Regeneration is inherent in how the planet behaves and considering this is important to my project. I Tried to build in elements of regenerative design and transition design when thinking about how a food and land culture might form in Scotland. I have tried to consider the different forms of life and put them at the centre of my designs, creating symbiotic connections between people, land and food but also highlighting the connections that already exist in nature to people who may not have that pre-existing knowledge.

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Diagram — Kiosk Studio

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“We change culture by changing the nature of the conversation. It’s about choosing conversations that have the power to create the future ”

Peter Block, Liberating Sructures

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Developing an Experience The next stage in my project process was trying to visualise some of this research and insights into a physical workshop or experience that people could attend.

I had a tutorial with Ella and we discussed a soil based workshop, at first I was considering making it a co-design workshop where people developed a future culture together, however after our discussions I realised that there would be a richness in designing this as an experience for people to come and learn about soil and food. We talked about designing something that felt like fine-dining or a tasting menu and borrowing from these already known concepts but turning them into a provocation using soil.

So I decided to co-design the workshop elements with people who were experts in their fields and spent time at this stage getting interviews with key people who worked in farming and food. This enabled me to facilitate the designing of a new experience with the experts bringing their knowledge to the table.

Over the next week of the project I engaged with experts, researched more about soil and developed stakeholders and personas for my workshop so I could then design the experience as a whole.

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Interviewing stakeholders

INTERVIEWS

Conventional farming is like keeping someone on a life support machine, they drip feed the soil to keep it alive but it’s not living.

Regenerative farming is looking after something living!

- Charlie, Free Company

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As I am not an expert in Soil and land practices, I decided to interview a range of different people to understand more but also to co-design some of the elements of the workshop.

I asked questions about how soil works, people’s relationship to the soil and what the experts thought the biggest barriers to food and soil knowledge were among citizens.

I interviewed a cross section of people from Scotland including: - Charlie, Farmer, The Free Company - Floortje, Market Gardener, Locavore Farm - Nick, Chef, Bilson Eleven This gave me a range of knowledge, but also reflected who I saw as being stakeholders in an experience like this one. Their knowledge of the soil but also of food and people’s experiences with food would be invaluable to helping convey provocations to people attending the tasting session. Some of the people I interviewed either sent a recording or attended the workshop to aid discussions too and be a part of a crossknowledge platform.

I am in a long term relationship with the soil, I have to give to it to receive something from it. I wish more people understand how easy it is to make good soil, we can make more of it, we have to!

-Floortje Brandsteder, Locavore Farm

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I decided to test the soil for PH levels to add to the explanations offered to people attending the tasting and I wanted to showcase them in a more food environment for the tasting so I decided to use Kilner Jars to show the soil.

SOIL SAMPLES

Throughout designing this experience, I kept referring back to the idea of dining experiences and tastings, I wanted to borrow as much as possible from this type of experience so that people were more provoked when finding out it was about soil and earth. I felt this would have the biggest impact, but also make people think more about the connection to food and our culture with food and the earth.

Recording soil samples

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One of the things that I understood more from my interviews was how little people might understand soil or even see the difference between Soil and Mud. Most of the growers talked about how people either are scared of soil, see it as dirty or just think anything can be grown in any form of mud.

I decided that soil and different types needed to form part of the experience I was creating for people, so I went around the west coast getting different soil samples for people to look at, touch and smell in my experience. The farmers and market gardeners I interviewed also provided me with soil samples to show people.

Two of the samples I received from the Free Company showed soil from a farm in conversion with conventional farming practices versus soil from one of their organic regenerative fields.

Collecting soil samples

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PERSONAS 94

In order to develop Personas for my experience, I decided to map the interconnected nature of soil to understand where personas and stakeholders might sit.

I wanted to make sure that I developed personas so that I could build and experience that would be interesting to people who understood soil and food as well as consumers who didn’t.

I started off my mapping soil, then adding both human and non-human stakeholders to the map and then in order to find missing stakeholders and understand what people would be coming to the experience knowing I mapped the stakeholders to different quadrants.

Mapping the interconnectedness of Soil and the stakeholders involved in Soil.

The next pages show the different layers of this process, it helped me try and find ways to engage different people in the experience and how to bring different people together to make the discussions richer.

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Digitally mapping the positive, negative and equal impacts. Positive and Negative are used here to not show good or bad but where something is increased or decreased, for instance pesticides negatively impact health by causing more health problems, but they positively impact higher yields by producing more consistent farming.

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I then started to build in personas into this map, creating a range of tribes for both non-human and human stakeholders, some of these people have knowledge of this system and others don’t

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I then mapped them based on their knowledge and whether they were producers in the system or consumers

I decided from my knowledge and research that these would be Supermarkets and Pesticides, I felt they didn’t need personas, but they would be present at the experience in terms of discussions.

I then mapped whether people cared about the cause or not I noticed there was a big gap in terms of producers that don’t care

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A selection of personas developed for my experience

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SENSORY FIELD 106

Tasting Box for Unusual Ingredients event at Sonica

How is eating altered by the senses?

As part of my research into sensory food experiences, I attended an event run by Food Futurist Caroline Hobkinson. It combined food and music in a sensory experience to provoke memories and a new way of thinking around food.

It was a really useful thing for me to attend as this experience is the first I have developed around the concept of multi-sensory provocations, I took some insights from the event along with my own understanding of how sounds and the lack of sight can change the way we taste. This is something I decided to try and incorporate into my experience.

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Insight 1: Sense of Smell Creating ‘scene-setting scents’ changes the way people engaged with food. It can create an atmosphere for the food but also trigger a different memory of experience for someone eating.

Insight 2: Sight & Tasting Plates The colour of the plate changes the way we engage with food. A study in Spain showed that eating frozen strawberries off a white plate compared to a black one made them taste 10% sweeter to diners.

Insight 3: Feeling flavour Studies have shown that what diners touch can make a difference to how they eat and experience their food. Not just the food but also the plates and cutlery that they touch, certain textures and weights make a difference to the flavour.

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SENSORY READING

I read ‘ Gastro Physics ‘ by Professor Charles Spence to better understand how my workshop might engage people in a multi-sensory way. This book helped me think about different ways I could create an experience for people attending the workshop and help make connections between soil and food.

Food and eating are not just about taste; they are about the other senses. I wanted to bring as many of them as possible into this experience. I wanted to understand how using different senses might create different connections for people.

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EXPERIENCE DESIGN 110

With the personas, interviews and research I started to develop the experience. Some of the ideas had been co-designed with me and the experts, I started off by developing concepts for the tastings but making sure everything was linked back to the knowledge and provocations that people were going to experience.

Using Miro to brainstorm experiences and tasting plates

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From the initial brainstorming I started to develop each concept in more detail, what was going to be needed and what the order of the event might look like.

I presented this along with a moodboard for the experience (see following page) at the development review and received good feedback.

Kirsty and Zoe suggested thinking more about the vessels that people will taste from - I was keen to develop these in ceramics as well because I wanted people to eat from something that also represented the earth. Clay and Soil have similar mineral properties so it felt fitting to design the eating vessels from Clay.

I also developed each concept and what people would be learning and taking away from each part of the experience, I started to think about how I would capture the changes in understanding and what people might takeaway with them.

Something that Zoe talked about in my review was trying to create a loop - i.e. developing a way for people to loop back on their experiences and make changes if they were provoked enough at the experience.

This is something I wanted to take forward as part of the development of the workshop.

Developing the order of the event and what was needed

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Making Vessels

Developing the vessels was an important part of the experience, I wanted to make sure that every element of the experience was designed like it would be in a fine dining or tasting experience.

I started to develop the vessels based on the different food people were tasting along with different knowledge I wanted to help people gain during the event.

I took inspiration from different vessels that reference the earth or plating in a more natural setting (see following pages) as these felt in keeping with the mood I wanted to create.

Image of final vessels being used with edible soil

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I really liked the idea of a broken plate format. This is a fine dining experience, but makes it harder to eat and focus on what is eating.

This is an experience from Park Row in London about food from the forest, I was excited by this concept and the table design and layout as well. I liked the idea of creating an atmosphere around soil as well as plating up food.

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I really liked this earth inspired pinch pots, I felt this could be an interesting vessel to provoke people to eat something they couldn’t see.

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This is another example of a broken plate, I also like the rustic earthiness of the glazing that has been used. I felt like this would provoke people to think about what they were eating off, how they were eating from something made from the earth. I wanted to create plates that also brought about those thoughts in order to maybe change the perspective of the food.

This is a more fine dining version of a earth like plate, more stylised than the previous ones, I liked the feeling of eating off something that felt like it had been dug up however it felt maybe too polished for my event.

One of the ways I wanted to showcase food was split into different categories on the plate, I really liked this example of something like a Fondue Plate or Mezze Plate but with a more natural branch like approach to it.

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These felt like really natural plates even though they have been cast in ceramics, I like the way they look like charred pieces of wood with the glazes, yet they are sophisticated and used in a fine dining setting.

I was thinking about how things are plated in fine dining experiences and was researching the concept of everything being plated on a large plate. I wondered if you could create something similar with different vegetables / soils if a platter of some kind like this was used.

Further looking at vessels that have different sections for displaying food I came across this image, it is a ceramic paint palette but I felt it was really interesting in terms of food being in different sections and I like the rustic look of how it had been made and glazed.

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This is a more stylised plate of food, but I liked the fact that it has pebbles and rocks around it, even shells.

It is displaying fish in a more natural way, I also liked the idea of the paper - this could be really useful in provoking thought before eating like a speculative newspaper report of the soil depletion of the future.

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Initial sketch design

The first vessel I decided to design and make was the pinch pot inspired plate. For one of my provocations I wanted to create something that visually looked like soil and get people to eat it, this felt like the perfect vessel for this because of the deep sides people would need to take a leap of faith and eat something they couldn’t see. I wanted the vessels to have a earthy brown and red tone to them so they reflected the soil.

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Glazing and hand-building pinch pots

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Initial sketch of the potato plate

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The second plate, taking inspiration from sectioned plates was for a trio of different potatoes. The plate was a standard thrown shape with groves marking out 3 key areas like a pie chart. I developed the concept of a placemat to fill in as well during the experience, this would sit underneath the plate and participants would write their thoughts on each potato.

The broken plates, this was to symbolise the broken ground and the lack of nutrients in our soils, food would be placed on two halves and dinners would need to eat whilst considering this provocation.

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Unfortunately due to getting Covid not all my plates were finished for the event, but I used props that symbolised the different plates. This afforded me the opportunity to understand people’s experience with them and iterate on them going forward.

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Running Dish the Dirt

After developing the concept of Dish the Dirt, I eventually ran the experience with 10 participants - people who had submitted fridges during my research phase and 2 people I had interviewed for the project.

The main part of the experience was the soil experience, attendees were encouraged to get their hands dirty, experience the different soils I had collected from around the West Coast of Scotland and eat food during this. I also had video recordings from Charlie the Farmer at the Free Company that were played during the soil tastings.

Attendees tasted 4 plates of food using the different vessel concepts and were encouraged to think about the relationship between the food and the soil.

Experiencing different soils

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Experience Timeline

I presented an introduction to the project, some initial research and set the scene for the prototype experience

Understanding of how soil and growing affects flavour and nutrition of the food we eat.

Engage people in soil, get people to experience the different varieties of soil

Potato Tasting 1

Sitting at an ordinary table, tasting 3 unknown potatoes.

Attendees gave their feedback on each of the different potatoes

BREAK

Experience eating food whilst smelling the earth to help change the flavours and bring out the nutrient flavours.

Multi-sensory experience of soils to make them think about soil and food.

Attendees moved to a different table after the break, here the table was covered in organic soil, different soils from around the West Coast of Scotland and were asked to engage with the soil. Smelling and touching it.

I handed out two types of soil wedges from The Free Company - a conventional soil and an organic grown soil for people to see the difference.

Part One: Non-soil tasting

Introduction to project

A side by side comparison of the different types of Potatoes grown in the UK.

A second round of potato tasting, this time the potatoes were served up later the soil experience. Two smelling trays consisting of the raw ingredients to compost i.e. Hay, Grass Leaves etc. were used to make the room smell more like earthiness.

The potato was served with information about the types of potato and where it was grown.

Soil Experience

Potato Tasting 2

A side by side comparison of the different types of Carrots grown in the UK. A side by side comparison of the soil each Carrot was from. This enabled attendees to not only taste the difference, but see and smell the difference in the soil helping them connect back to how the flavour might be altered by the organic matter.

Attendees were shown short clips about nutrient density and the loss of nutrients in Carrots due to the soil.

They were then served up a broken plate, with two carrots on each half (Conventionally grown and Regeneratively grown). They were also given the soil from the different types of farms to smell and look at whilst eating.

Carrot Tasting

Soil Tasting

Part Two: Soil experience tasting

Engaging people in food without knowledge of soil

Key What happened?

Getting people to taste a range of different potatoes without knowledge of where the potatoes are from

Why this mattered?

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The centrepiece of the experience table

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Attendees were encouraged to experience the soil as they ate their food

Touching and smelling the soils of Scotland

The broken plate - two carrots, two soils showcasing not all food or soil is the same

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Experience Feedback The carrot tasted how that soil looked, empty and depleted.

I hadn’t considered the soil before!

I feel scammed by the supermarkets, the carrots tasted of nothing compared to the better ones!

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Having the soil there really changed it for me, it wasn’t just a buzzword. I could see why Organic soil is better, I could see the impact it might have on the veg!

I was shocked by how little knowledge I had of the soil, how little I felt connected to something I now know is so significant. I will be thinking about this when buying veg in the future!

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“We need to regenerate our communities through our relationship to place.

Choosing to listen to nature can help us build back and restore the ecosystems we’re a part of — allowing our communities to thrive.”

Space 10, Copenhagen

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Expert Input Day 2

The second expert input day came just after my experience, and I felt a lot more confident than in previous sessions. The prototype session went well, and the feedback was better than expected. In this expert input session, I showed them my prototype, asked them questions about how they felt this session could be developed further and then showed a range of outcomes that could be designed to distillate the experience.

I wanted to get a sense of how they felt I could design this experience into something more tangible for my project outcome. I also wanted to know what the experts thought about the concept of a soil experience workshop in a fine-dining / supper-club setting.

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Their feedback (see following pages) focused more on the takeaways and the outcomes of the experience. What would people come away with? What was the significant impact statement that you could tell other people?

Slides from my presentation showing my aims for the prototype and project

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This is a great idea with the ability to make true innovation. Articulate the knowledge and the impact.

What are the innovations if you gain this future knowledge and experience this workshop?

- Micheal Johnson, GSA Research Fellow

This is an interesting idea, seeing the value of soil! What is the future experience? What impact does it have in a speculative sense?

- Lewis Just, Pawprint

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This is a really great concept, it is very novel to see something linked to soil in this way!

Could this be linked to socioeconomic things?

-John Thorne, GSA Sustainability

Brilliant idea. How could you take it further at get rid of the idea that soil is dirty?

What if the future of soil is precious? - Deidre Nelson, Artist and Designer I like that this is an experience, it is fun, not just an educational workshop! Think about fun takeaways for people, what the big fact? - Calum Macleod, Senior Service Designer

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Reflection By this stage, it felt like it had gained a lot of momentum. I managed to tie up so much of my research into an experience design. I had started with the desire to make changes to culture, understand the narratives that go into that culture, and design something that could impact it. The Dish the Dirt experience did just that and I felt that it was an exciting concept. The expert feedback made me realise that was something people wanted to experience and something people saw the value in within the context of other things around food system change.

For example, this could feed into food growing in Glasgow, a big part of the city food plan. It would be helpful to use Dish the Dirt as a concept to consider the nutrient density of food and understand more about the links to farming as part of the Scottish Government’s good food nation bill.

Ultimately though, it is an experience that people could come and enjoy alone or with friends, like a typical dining experience, but hopefully, they might take away something new. It can take up to 3.5 times hearing the same thing to make a change, so Dish the Dirt could be that catalyst for change. I could see at this point how everything I had set out to do was coming together, and it felt exciting to think about how to deliver the final distillation of the experience.

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Developing & Iterating I wanted to create a way for people to leave the experience with more information without making the experience like a workshop. I decided on creating a zine format after asking people if they would prefer this or more information on the menu. The zine would have more information and would also act as a guide for where they could shop for better food locally this could be put onto their fridges and used, which linked back to my original fridge engagement.

Key takeaway

Final Iterations

Bespoke Ceramics

Multi-sensory experience

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I considered ways to make the experience more multi-sensory and how to distil down that experience for people viewing the project. I decided to make a way to engage with the smell of the soil.

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Pinch Pots

I decided to enclose the pot in another vessel and add soil and grass so that when people got closer to the pot to smell and observe it, their noses got closer to the soil and grass.

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For my prototype experience, I had made a pinch pot using ceramics, which was high-sided and made it difficult to know with the aid of chocolate soil if you were eating soil or not. At the prototype, people’s feedback on this pot was encouraging.

They liked the way it felt and its sound like scraping a spade into soil. I decided to iterate this further by adding another sense around the smell. I wanted to position this pot as though it was actually on the earth.

I then iterated on this again, changing the outside vessel to brown so that the whole experience felt cohesive. This pot was about two senses; sight and smell, and it was a provocation around eating and experiencing soil. I felt the iterations elevated the design further and made it more experiential.

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Broken Earth Plate The broken plate symbolises the fractured earth and the lack of nutrients in our ground.

This plate was for my carrot tasting course, a side-by-side comparison of carrots and their grown soil. I had to use a paper plate for the prototype because of time-scales, but this gave me an excellent opportunity for feedback.

People understood why this plate for broken and felt that the experience of eating off the plate made it more poignant. I decided to iterate on this and take the concept further, again using ceramics as a material because this comes from the earth.

My first iteration of the onepiece broken plate was too small, and the soil didn’t fit.

I felt that although the jars worked, it would be more interesting and exciting if the soil was served with the food. I reiterated this concept, making the plate bigger and creating two unique spaces.

I was pleased with the final concept (below). This final plate allowed for the pieces of carrot, so it on the plate with their soil without it touching. It was also perfect for service at dinner as this was one plate that a waiter could take to the table like usual.

My initial iteration was just two halves, but this didn’t work as a way to plate up - when I went back to ask questions from the chef engaged in my co-design, they said this would cause a lot of additional staff needs. I wanted to also have the soil on the plate as much as possible to iterate with a one-piece broken plate that allowed for both carrots and their soils.

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Potato Plate

This was a larger plate, handmade in ceramics with discs that stood up above the soil.

Similar to the Broken Earth plate the potato plate I used in the prototype was a paper one. I had segmented areas for each potato, because they were from different farms. People liked this plate a lot, but I felt like it lacked a lot of the multi-sensory experience that I wanted for Dish the Dirt plates.

I decided to try and play with the way the potatoes sat on the plate, I felt it would be an exciting experience if the potato plate was covered in soil and the potatoes sat in that soil (without touching it). I tried different ways of achieving this.

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When fired in the kiln and glazed, I realised that the size felt too clunky and unrefined.

I wanted to try and find a way to make it feel less rustic and more fine dining.

I realised that the plate needed to be smaller and the discs needed to be more refined and less stood up on sticks. I developed this concept further by making a small plate, with an undulating base for the soil.

I made simple discs that sat in side the base.

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The final outcome worked really well and was really beautiful. The potatoes could sit on the plate like a row in a field but not touch the soil and from above this experience would be really engaging and experiential to the diner. Not only would their food be served in soil, which would be sensory for sight. They would also be able to smell the soil and this would hopefully make an impact on their experience of the potatoes.

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Geosmin Snifter

For my final outcome I wanted to distil down one of the key elements of my experience which was smell. During the prototype experience I created ‘smelling trays’ which contained all the elements of compost in the raw form - hay, leaves, grass etc. I used boiling hot water to make the room smell like compost whilst people were eating.

I wanted to design a way for this to be experienced outside of the dining experience.

I decided to try and make a smaller version.

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My initial concept (left) felt too cosmetics inspired so I decided to try and iterate using a propagator (above). I added a snifter vessel for the smelling aspect, this felt appropriate to the design both visually it was in keeping with fine dining and also for the smelling aspect.

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The propagator was more symbolic of growing and the earth, but I felt like it distracted from the purpose of the experience. I decided to refine this concept down simply to the raw ingredients and the snifter. I added a second way to engage with smelling the soil. I felt like this iteration was engaging and refined enough for the fine dining setting.

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Experience Branding

Dish the Dirt

Abcd ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWYXZ Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwyxz 1234567890!@#$%^&*

Abcd

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWYXZ Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwyxz 1234567890!@#$%^&*

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Dish the Dirt

After iterating all my bespoke ceramics and multi-sensory elements, I decided that Dish the Dirt needed to have a brand that matched the experience.

I took inspiration from fine dining settings, at this stage of the project I was in Lisbon for a food conference and ate a restaurant called Prado, which creates a relaxed, meadow like fine dining experience. I drew a lot of inspiration from how that felt and how they created an experience for diners to feel.

I wanted dish the dirt to feel natural and earthy, without being rustic. I wanted to create a brand that felt modern and fine dining without being stuffy. I decided to find colours that symbolised earth and nature and different assets like stone collages and patterns that could be added to posters and my takeaways.

My moodboard and style guide convey a sense of calm, a sense of eating well and a connection to nature.

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Soil Zine

With the brand in place, my final outcome was the zine which I wanted to make as the takeaway for the experience. During the prototype I asked people what they would change and most participants said they would like something to takeaway with them to use going forward in their lives. The experts at the expert input session said the same.

and where to shop when opening their fridges to do their weekly shop.

Each Dish the Dirt experience would have a zine that was bespoke to the experience for instance if you went to a DTD in the West End of Glasgow, you would get a map of that area. The map would be updated and could also be downloaded from the DTD website too.

I designed a zine format because it is small, pocket sized and would be folded out and used as a map. The inside was a map of hyper-local shopping, unique to each different dish the dirt experiences. This could be added to people’s fridges so that they could be reminded of the experience 164

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Final Outcomes

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My final Dish the Dirt experience laid out before the diner arrives.

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A 6-course tasting experience & discussion

hosted by Glasgow City Council for people working in food in Glasgow as part of the City Food Plan

20th July 2022 @ 7pm City Chambers, Glasgow

Dish the Dirt

I developed a framework for experience posters to be created. Dish the Dirt as an experience could take on a range of different forms from pop-up dining experiences in Scotland to experiences used for policy changes. Dish the Dirt’s aim is to delight diners but also to feed into policy and cultural change so it could be adapted for a range of different purposes. Poster on the right is a pop up event, the poster above is an event created and booked by Glasgow City Council as part of their city food plan.

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Dish the Dirt

EXPERIENCE WHERE YOUR FOOD COMES FROM

What are you putting on people’s plates?

WE ARE GOING TO DISH THE DIRT

Experience Posters

A 6-course tasting experience

10th June 2022 @ 7pm Civic House Canteen

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Awareness Posters

In order for people to find out about the experience I designed a range of Awareness Posters using facts from soil and food. This poster (left) is provoking thought about the broken earth and the lack of nutrients in the soil, this comes from my research that soils are so depleted now that you need to eat more conventionally grown food than you did in the 1940s.

The poster (below) about football comes from the Soil Associations facts about how much top soil we are losing globally. 95% of our food is grown in topsoil and yet we are losing around 30 football pitches a minute.

I felt that this would be an interesting awareness poster in Glasgow on match days.

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Speculative Impact Mapping

Dish the Dirt could have a future impact on Scottish food culture. This outcome is an experience that is not educational but exciting and interesting to attend because the start of my brief and the focus of the project was about changing ordinary people’s ideas about food and culture in a way that is accessible to them. I created an impact map that showed the speculative future impact that Dish the Dirt might have. Most of the elements on this impact map come from my original research. This chart shows how the impact map outcomes link back to the research conducted throughout this project.

IMPACT IF DISH THE DIRT EXISTS (SPECULATIVE FUTURE, 2041)

RESEARCH (PRESENT OCCURRENCES) Good Food Nation Bill - the right to food (Scot Gov, 2022)

Good Food Nation Bill - Exporting food from Scotland (Nourish Scot, 2022)

Hollyrood Export changes due to focus on Scottish Food and Soils

Good Food Nation Bill focuses on nutrients as part of right to food law

Soil tourism in Scotland due to increased flavour and quality Whisky Tourism focused on the terroir of the soils in Scotland (Times, 2022) Soil foraging experiences for locals and tourists on Airbnb Foraging experiences at an all time high in Scotland (Airbnb, 2022)

Soil from regenerative farms more nutrient dense than conventional (Soil Association, 2021)

Sugar Taxes in the UK (UK Gov2020) Calories added to food in UK (UKGov 2022)

Better health outcomes from better soils in Scotland - more nutrients

Different taxing made law, based on where and how food is grown

More regenerative spending as people more aware of the ’why’ behind it.

More Organic Spending in 2021 (Soil Association survey, 2022)

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Persona Impact

KEY IMPACT Knows more about soil than before and uses the zine to engage with others more easily. Feels more empowered to make changes with new knowledge KEY CHANGE Takes more notice even in local shops and supermarkets to see where food comes from, chooses more regenerative food not just Scottish food.

KEY IMPACT People care more about Soil and Biota, there is a bigger focus on creating more top quality Scottish soils. The soil is well fed and full of life.

KEY CHANGE People care and value Soil and Biota more. Because it is getting what it needs, Soil and Biota in Scotland is more happy, nutrient rich and feeding people better food.

KEY IMPACT Has more knowledge about how and why food is more nutrient dense and thinks about how people need less food if it is better quality. Trying to bring in more laws around soil and engage more people in Dish the Dirt experiences KEY CHANGE A new focus on food and land, not just feeding people at any cost. Making sure food is better quality for people and planet.

KEY IMPACT Has a better understanding of food, feels more able to understand debates that are happening around it.

KEY CHANGE Slower adopter of new practices, but has been more aware of the taste of food and eats a little bit less processed food. Feels a sense of growing pride in Scotland’s food and land.

Showing the impact for each persona

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Next Steps

I could have taken this project further if I had more weeks to develop and iterate.

It could be an ongoing iteration, evolving with the seasons, policy, and what might be needed at each step of the cultural change.

The next iteration of Dish the Dirt is happening during the degree show, sponsored by GSA Sustainability. I will be taking Dish the Dirt part 2 with everything I have worked on in the second part of this project to a new audience.

I hope to see Dish the Dirt evolve further over the years and would like to run different versions of this experience in Scotland.

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Final Reflection PROJECT FINAL STATEMENT This project has been an incredible experience for so many reasons. It has enabled me to tackle a topic I am passionate about, but it has also pushed me beyond what I could have imagined achieving. It has allowed me to explore different ways of designing and diverse methods and mediums for my project outcomes. I am reflecting on 12 weeks’ worth of work with a great sense of achievement, relief and pride at the result I have designed.

During this project, I was unsure whether I would be able to design something that hit the brief, was thought-provoking and could change food cultures in Scotland. As an experience design concept, ‘Dish the Dirt’ could be iterated further and further, but I feel it does tick all three of those boxes as it is now.

people have a visceral experience or an enjoyable time, they will probably remember that for longer, which might change how they feel about something.

Dish the Dirt is an experience that does that. It aims to subtly tell a story, a new narrative about food and land in a familiar and exciting way to people.

ITERATIONS Dish the Dirt could be iterated on. I would love to see it exploring the seasons. I would love to consider making different experiences at different times of the year, creating more bespoke ceramics to tell seasonal narratives. The next iteration of Dish the Dirt is happening during the degree show, sponsored by GSA Sustainability.

I will be taking Dish the Dirt part 2 with everything I have worked on in the second part of this project to a new audience.

PROJECT BRIEF My brief aimed to ‘Design new narratives and cultures that could aid food system change’. I believe that this concept does just that; if we can change narratives about where food comes from, equip people with more knowledge about real food and challenge the notion of ‘food fraud’, we can change our culture for the better.

To do all of those things, any experience needs to be something people will enjoy, find delightful, and not make them feel like they’re in a workshop or lecture. My prior knowledge and research from my dissertation showed me that when people are lectured or educated, they won’t necessarily make changes. However, when 186

I hope to see Dish the Dirt evolve further over the years and would like to run different versions of this experience in Scotland.

FINAL REFLECTIONS Reflecting on this project feels like a huge achievement, not just for the last 12 weeks of work but for the previous four years that have culminated in this outcome.

I cannot believe this is the last process project journal that I will write as part of my journey through undergraduate product design, but I feel it shows how far I have transitioned as a designer. My process and practice have changed, allowing me to move easily between service, product, and experience design, something I could not

have imagined four years ago. I am ending this journal with a sense of achievement for what has been designed and excitement for what is yet to created.

Acknowledgements I would like to take this opportunity to thank a few people who without their support this project would not have happened.

could not have happened without your input and honesty.

Firstly, my project tutor and supervisor, Zoe Prosser, who has supported me throughout this project, pushed me to think differently and helped me consider my process and practice in ways I couldn’t have done alone.

Secondly, I want to thank my programme leader Irene Bell, who has helped me to think more playfully and further encouraged me to develop my making skills in ceramics for this project.

The experts who were involved throughout this project providing knowledge, feedback and support. In particular, Charlie from the Free Company and Floortje from Locavore, amazing growers who helped me understand more about soil and food and helped co-design Dish the Dirt. Nick from Bilson Eleven and Sally Morris from Locavore, two chefs and foodies who helped shape this project from the perspective of the kitchen and restaurant life..

I want to thank Stef Baxter, my ceramics tutor, who helped me tirelessly get my plates and pots through the kiln in order to meet my deadlines.

Plus, all those interviewed as part of my research and people who gave up their time to feedback on my outcomes. Everyone who submitted a fridge in Scotland, this project 187

Dish the Dirt

GABBY MORRIS