Where does design sit within the cycle of food system change?

Where does design sit within the cycle of food system change?

An evaluation of past, present and future food system redesigning in Britain

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Synopsis This dissertation will discuss and analyse projects and methodologies that are attempting to redesign and decentralise the food system. Using a historical timeline from the 1960s onwards and the backdrop of the global food system, I will evaluate the effectiveness of past organisation, community and citizen action on changing the food system. As well as understanding the projects and their process, I will assess the use of design-led approaches such as participatory design, codesign and social innovation in being a catalyst for change in this domain. My dissertation will draw on the practices and theories of Ezio Manzini, Hilary Cotman and Anthony Dunne Fiona Raby, along with a selection of food-based texts and theories to evaluate food system redesign both past and present. My dissertation will include research of current food projects within Glasgow. I will be using my case studies of research of community engagement projects run by Glasgow Community Food Network and MDes Product Design students in 2021.

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Table of Contents Synopsis .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 List of Illustrations ......................................................................................................................................................................4 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................................................................6 Chapter Overview .......................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Section 1: A very brief history of food culture .................................................................................................................. 8 Chapter 1: The world’s larder in your local Tesco............................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2: Cranking up the counter-culture from the 1960’s onwards .............................................. 11 Chapter 3: Consume not Consommé, food culture in the 1980s and 1990’s ................................ 14 Section 2: Global Food today, still here tomorrow? ..................................................................................................19 Chapter 4: Has anything changed? ...................................................................................................................................19 Section 3: (Re)Designing Food and the Food System .......................................................................................... 22 Chapter 5: Food Design and Designers ....................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 6: Food Jams and Community Gardens................................................................................................. 25 Glasgow Community Food Network Food Jam ................................................................................................ 25 Glasgow’s Future Potluck ................................................................................................................................................... 27 Food for thought – A Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 30 References .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 32 Appendices ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 39 Appendix 1 – Short Studies of Local Food Organisations in Glasgow & Scotland ................. 39 Glasgow Locavore CIC............................................................................................................................................................ 39 Glasgow Community Food Network (GCFN) ...................................................................................................... 39 Nourish Scotland ...................................................................................................................................................................... 40 Appendix 2 – Case Study of “Food Jam” by Glasgow Community Food Network & Centre for Civic Innovation......................................................................................................................................................................... 41 Appendix 3 – Case Study of “Future Food Workshop” by GSA Innovation School, MDES students ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 43

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List of Illustrations 1.

Figure 1 Global Food System Map 3. Source: Shift N, 2009 Setting priorities to address the research gaps between agricultural systems analysis and food security outcomes in low-and middle-income countries - Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https https://www.researchgate.net/figure/GlobalFood-System-Map-3-Source-ShiftN-2009_fig1_331311296 [accessed 25 Jan, 2022] ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8

2. Figure 2 'Lure of the Aisles' Martin Parr/Magnum Photos (source Catterall, C. (1999).

Food : design and culture. London: Laurence King Pub. In Association With Glasgow) ......................................................................................................................................................................................10 3. Figure 3 'Lure of the Aisles' Martin Parr/Magnum Photos (source Catterall, C. (1999).

Food : design and culture. London: Laurence King Pub. In Association With Glasgow) ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 15 4. Figure 4 Diffusion of Innovation Bell Curve (Source: http://blog.leanmonitor.com/early-adopters-allies-launching-product/)........................ 16 5. Figure 5 'Kentish Barn' Tesco in 1995 in Burton-on-Trent (original photo Staffordshire Live)............................................................................................................................................................... 16 6. Figure 6 Evening Standard Newspaper Article from 1992 - Terence Conran (source https://www.hardens.com/uk-london/12-09-2020/rip-sir-terence-conran/) ............... 18 7. Figure 7 Image of empty Sainsbury's Shelves in the Pandemic by Gary Carlton........ 20 8. Figure 8 Google Trends, showing 'Food System Redesign' searches on Google from 2009 (earliest data) -2022 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=200909-09%202022-01-25&q=food%20system%20design ..................................................................... 23 9. Figure 9 Google Trends, showing 'Food System Change' searches on Google from 2009 (earliest data) - 2022 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=200909-09%202022-01-25&q=food%20system%20change .................................................................... 23 10. Figure 10 Design Mode Map by Ezio Manzini, photographed by Gabby Morris from "Design When Everybody Designs" pg. 40 ..................................................................................................... 25 11. Figure 11 Photo of Gabby Morris at Food Jam on 7th November 2021 photo by Heather Hamilton .............................................................................................................................................................. 26 12. Figure 12 Photo of Food Engagements at the Glasgow Potluck on 8th December 2021. Photo by Gabby Morris .................................................................................................................................... 28

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“Because cooking involves the conception and execution of an idea, the assembling of functional components into a pleasing whole… this makes it similar to design.”1

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Bayley, S. (2018). Taste: The secret meaning of things. S.L.: Circa Pr.

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Introduction Food is a topic on which we all have an opinion, it is one of the fundamentals to a living organism, we must eat to stay alive, it is shared activity that every human takes part in.

Food is woven into the fabric of our society. We eat not just for sustenance but enjoyment, and food has become a pleasure, even a form of entertainment within people’s lives today.

Food has a personal and cultural value, as the French gastronome Anthelme BrillatSavarin supposed, “Tell me what kind of food you eat, and I will tell you what kind of man you are2”.

However, our food consumption is no longer based on picking berries from the surrounding trees or hunting; it is based on a complex system. The Food System is a web of lines weaving between growing, production, processing, transport and consumption3.

Those lines are further complicated by taste, economics, culture, values and opinions. The food system could be compared to a Rhizome, developed by the postmodern theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari4. There are hidden and visible structures with lots of different parts linking to other parts, it is hard to reduce it down to one beginning or ending or even a direction.

We have global food systems, national and local food systems, all working away to bring food to people’s plates. It is dependent on governance, policy, sustainability and even the weather5. Once upon a time, it helped a fast-growing population get fed and develop economically, fostering urban progress, but the innovation we created came at a cost.

Today we are arguably reaping the rewards and the costs of a food system built for industrial progress; we have an unwieldy model that most people don’t understand and affects every other aspect of our lives6. It appears that the modern food system is broken, whether we look at it from the point of food scarcity and the rise of foodbank use7 to the rise in obesity. Food doesn’t work for producers who aren’t paid enough,8 or consumers as we see the implications of eating a poor diet and the strain on our health systems. Food is at the core of the UN sustainable development goals as evidence mounts of the damage caused to the environment and climate change by industrial agriculture9. It is easy to believe that this is due to sudden changes, but it is not. As set out by the design agency IDEO, “Our food system is not “broken.” It’s working exactly as designed10”, and this is a food utopia for many.

Because of this designed approach, people believe there can be a fix or a solution that can be developed. People believe that the food system can be redesigned. At a recent event organised by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the Big Food Workshop, experts from different fields worldwide came together to speak on and discuss the topic “…the need to radically redesign for circularity and regionalism, to help us heal our broken global food system”11. IDEO recently launched an arm of their design practice to heal the system and a podcast that discusses “radically redesigning it”12. The V&A Museum in London often has food-related exhibitions and talks, showcasing work from designers like Bombas and 2 Cramer, J.M., Greene, C.P. and Walters, L. (2011). Food as communication, communication as food. New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang. pg. 54 3 https://www.futureoffood.ox.ac.uk/what-food-system 4 Mambrol, Nasrullah. 2017. “The Philosophical Concept of Rhizome 5 https://www.futureoffood.ox.ac.uk/home#/?

6 Steel, C. (2013). Hungry city: how food shapes our lives. London: Vintage Books.

7 https://www.trusselltrust.org/news-and-blog/latest-stats/end-year-stats/ 8 https://www.nfuonline.com/ruthless-price-cuts-decimating-uk-dairy-farms/ 9 United Nations. 2020. “Food,” United Nations 10 https://page.ideo.com/food 11 https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/our-work/activities/food/big-food-workshop 12 https://page.ideo.com/food-podcast-1

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Parr. In addition to curating thought-provoking food redesign exhibitions, like their 2019 “Food: Bigger than the plate”. This exhibition invited visitors to taste, smell and debate experimental ideas about redesigning the food system13.

These are just a few examples; all over the globe, there are organisations, charities, social enterprises, designers and even communities trying to redesign the food system.

However, this drive for change is not a new phenomenon; citizens, groups, and even organisations have been attempting to impact the way the food system works through counter-culture, climate action, individual choice, and even political acts since the postindustrial era.

This dissertation will explore that historical journey and evaluate the cyclical nature of these ideas and aspirations. As well as assessing the effectiveness of the global food system in resisting change.

I will then focus on the present day and assess the new methods of design that have emerged and merged with social sciences such as anthropology and sociology to tackle wicked socioeconomic problems such as food. Through primary research case studies, this dissertation will be looking at these participatory designs. These methods are being used to change food systems at local levels to counter-act the global, and I will seek to evaluate if they are more effective than previous past interventions.

Chapter Overview This dissertation is split into key sections; section one focuses on the historical nature of the food system and food culture, section two looks at the present-day culture and evaluates what has changed, and section three evaluates whether design methods might be the intervention that makes the changes needed to our food system. As a whole, I hope to capture the landscape of food from the 1960s to the present day, unpicking the recurrent theme of people wanting food system change against the backdrop of a powerful and influential global food system. I conclude with my evaluation and some recommendations for the future of food redesign, both for my practice and for other designers.

This is a topic I am passionate about for the reasons cited above, food could be the key to many social changes in the UK, and I believe redesigning it will support the improvement of people’s lives. Having worked in the food manufacturing industry I find the global food system model fascinating. However, as a designer now, engaged and working in food systems, I started to consider how the present-day feels like we are at the forefront of something new. We are changing the system, but are we really! This led me to try to understand what had happened before. I am here to question whether we have exhausted the options. Is the system too big to change or can design methods be the key to more considerable systemic change?

13 V&A Museum. 2019. “V&a · FOOD: Bigger than the Plate - Exhibition at South Kensington

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Section 1: A very brief history of food culture

Chapter 1: The world’s larder in your local Tesco In this chapter, I will focus on how the global food system started in Britain the effects on culture and shopping and will take a look at the power of the supermarket chain, Tesco.

The Global Food System is only successful because of post-war American exports, including transportation, refrigeration and dehydration14.

Figure 1 Global Food System Map 3. Source: Shift N, 2009 Setting priorities to address the research gaps between agricultural systems analysis and food security outcomes in low-and middle-income countries - Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-Food-System-Map-3-Source-ShiftN2009_fig1_331311296 [accessed 25 Jan, 2022]

Britain after the the industrial revolution was a country of small land mass and sizable population, however famines were a thing of the past. The global food system was adopted by Britain in order to import most of what we assume as the British diet today.

The invention of canning and and salting enabled Britain to import key staples like Bacon from Denmark and Corned Beef from Argentina. Arguably, the ‘Great British Fry-up’ is not very British at all, everything apart from the eggs was imported into the country.

The global food system seems like a success, a brilliant invention of efficiency and scale.

However, that very success is often hotly debated, some suggest that today’s system is a utopia compared to our subsistence past but others consider this current iteration as out 14 Babita Sharma (2020). CORNER SHOP: shopkeepers, the Sharmas and the making of modern Britain. S.L.: Two Roads.

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of control and inefficient with a detrminental influence on social, economic and ecological issues around the world.

In the past cities and people were fed by individuals’, who grew, baked, reared and made food for markets. Today the Global Food System couldn’t be any further from this concept, it is largely owned and operated by huge transnational companies. These are described by Bill Heffernan, a social scientist as ‘Food Clusters’, ‘companies that control the food system all the way from gene to supermarket shelf’15. It is at this point of the dissertation, that we have to do a full loop like the system itself because the outputs of these conglomerate ‘food clusters’ are Supermarkets just like our local Tesco.

Tesco as the self-service store we know today is an American export that came to Britain in the late 1940s, ‘Bringing self-service to Britain in 1946, Jack Cohen travelled to America and brought back an idea that would change the face of British shopping.’16 Tesco started off as small stores and by the mid-1950s there were 555 Tesco stores around the UK but they were not the only ones by 1956 ‘…there were 3,000 supermarkets in operation with Tesco, Safeway, and Sainsbury’s becoming household names17. Tesco’s first superstore similar to what we have today opened in 1968, the term 'Superstore' was first used by Tesco when they opened their store in Crawley, West Sussex, it was 40,000 sq. ft. in size18.

Tesco is still the largest supermarket chain in the UK with 4,000 stores19 stocking on average around 25,000 different food product lines20.

With Tesco, ‘...the gleaming displays of mass consumerism and cheap prices were paraded like a pair of silk stockings. Giddy with excitement, the nation's shoppers were tripping over each other to get inside these new temples of merchandise’21, it was the start of the mass food culture that we have today.

15 Lang, T. and Heasman, M.A. (2015). Food wars: the global battle for minds, mouths, and markets. London: Routhledge.

Pg.144 16 https://www.tescoplc.com/about/our-history/ 17 Babita Sharma (2020). CORNER SHOP: shopkeepers, the Sharmas and the making of modern Britain. S.L.: Two Roads.

18 https://www.tescoplc.com/about/our-history/ 19 https://www.expatica.com/uk/living/household/supermarkets-in-the-uk 465489/#:~:text=Tesco%3A%20The%20UK 20https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/report/downloadreportbyfilename?filename=UK%20Supermarket%20Chain %20Profiles%202016_London_United%20Kingdom_12-13-2016.pdf 21 Babita Sharma (2020). CORNER SHOP: shopkeepers, the Sharmas and the making of modern Britain. S.L.: Two Roads.

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Figure 2 'Lure of the Aisles' Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

America emerged from the Second World War as a global power and its influence on Britain’s mainstream society was profound with consumerism as the spearhead. People now had more money to spend and they could afford new luxury goods that would have once have been too expensive, or accessible in their locality “consumption was no longer about utilitarian need, but status and comfort22”.

Arguably, Tesco brought the world’s food to high-streets and suburbs around the UK, but redeveloped it for the mass British consumers taste. It appears to be that as long as the British people are able to eat the world’s larder from their local Tesco they don’t consider what is in their food or where it comes from, described by Architect and Food Writer Carolyn Steel, ‘British Food Culture is little short of schizophrenic’23. ‘To read the Sunday papers you would think we were a nation of rampant gastronomes, yet few of us know much about our food or care to invest time and effort in it’24.

This British Schizophrenia was perfect for the supermarkets that supply our food, but also for the Global Food System that so many of us don’t consider when putting together our weekly meals. As long as people are fed and satisfied before sitting in front of the television of an evening, they do not consider the cost of how they have been fed, ‘We have become so used to eating cheaply that few of us question how it is possible to buy a chicken for less than half the cost of a packet of cigarettes. Fast forward to the present day and food is the most devalued commodity in the industrialised West25 yet the Global Food System powers on churning out our food to the mass consumerists who sit, blinkered, in full-bellied bliss.

22 Ibid.

23 Steel, C. (2013). Hungry city: how food shapes our lives. London: Vintage Books Pg. 5 24 Ibid Pg. 5 25 Ibid Pg. 51

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Chapter 2: Cranking up the counterculture from the 1960’s onwards The full-bellied bliss that the global system affords many has never been enough for some. Changing the food system or using food to change other social, political and economic issues is perhaps more critical. In this chapter I will focus on the people who started such movements to resist the culture created by industrialised foods, global food powers and large business like Tesco in the 1960s and 70s in both Britain and America.

The 19th and early 20th century saw the invention of canning, freezing, and other preserving methods. Following the second world war II there was a surge in the science of food procession and American manufacturers' ability to manipulate our food into forms never seen in nature26. 1960s America saw a rise in the rejection of these industrialised ways of making food, and a counterculture movement, termed 'Hippie Food' by writer Jonathan Kauffman, started. It was the political act of choosing to eat organic, local, and pre-industrial food. Counter-culturalist groups, mainly comprised of white middle-class youths, 'realised that food had the ability to be used as a tool for political expression’27 and used it to challenge the status quo in America.

As activist and researcher Miller suggests, 'when we fight about food, we also fight about social change'28. Arguably an early British example of the conventional business-led approach to food supply being challenged by a community-base was in Rochdale in England in 1844 a group of weavers created an early food coop selling flour, oatmeal, and other products to members to divert where their wages were spent after having their wage increase rejected29. These early examples show how people started to link challenging the food system and social issues.

As well as wanting social change, activists wanted to make changes to food culture itself.

In the UK, as part of the Wholefoods movement, an innovative restaurant called Cranks was founded in London’s Covent Garden, a former flower market that was re-purposed by bohemian entrepreneurs. Cranks opened in 196130 by husband and wife team David and Kay Canter. Cranks set out to change people's views on vegetarian cuisine, 'In contrast to the traditional, tired lettuce that makes the appetite wilt too, these salads could change the eater's whole view of vegetables'31 not just by opening cafés but by developing a lifestyle around them.

Today vegetarianism is on the menu of every café and restaurant in the UK and Cranks Wholefoods no longer exists in café form. Once a 'vocal for local' café, Cranks wholefoods was eventually sold to Nando's Grocery. A large international grocer selling processed food, such as Nando's Piri-Piri Sauce32. In 2017, Nando's grocery created Cranks ready meals and boxed sandwiches sold through Holland and Barret and Waitrose33, a far cry from the original wholesome beginnings of 1961.By the twenty-first century, what had once been a subversive idea had become so mainstream that Cranks was no longer needed 26 Ibid. pg. 5 27 Johnson, S. (2012). Colby College Digital Commons @ Colby Edible Activism: Food and the Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. pg.6 [online] Available at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1637&context=honorstheses.

28 Miller, S. (2008). Edible action: food activism and alternative economics. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Pub. Pg.4 29 Kauffman, J. (2018). Hippie food: how back-to-the-landers, longhairs, and revolutionaries changed the way we eat. New York: William Morrow, An Imprint Of Harpercollins Publishers. Pg. 239 30 Cranks Wholefoods (2021). All About Us - Cranks - Great Tasting Wholesome Food. [online] www.cranks.co.uk. Available at: https://www.cranks.co.uk/about-us/ [Accessed 20 Dec. 2021] 31 Canter, D. (1982). The cranks recipe book. London: Panther.

32 The Caterer (2002). Cranks may spring up again outside London. [online] The Caterer. Available at: https://www.thecaterer.com/archive/cranks-may-spring-up-again-outside-london [Accessed 20 Dec. 2021].

33 Cranks Wholefoods (2021). All About Us - Cranks - Great Tasting Wholesome Food. [online] www.cranks.co.uk. Available at: https://www.cranks.co.uk/about-us/ [Accessed 20 Dec. 2021]

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and, as Covent Garden had been gentrified meaning that rents were too high, it was no longer economically viable either. The powers within the food system have adopted this as a key ingredient in what they offer consumers. Nevertheless, with the success of Vegetarian food came the demise of the counterculture. The food system and its conglomerates won.

As mass production increases, the distance between where food comes from and the consumers that eat it creates a disconnection that obscures the knowledge about the conditions in which foods were made34. Under the same brand people may believe they are eating the same wholesome food but now under industrialised processes that food is different. Cranks are not the only tale that begins and ends in this way. It is likely that some of their original consumers, once delighted by the difference and counterculture, now eat their boxed sandwiches and ready meals in the belief that it is the same thing.

As editor of Food, Culture and Society Belasco suggests, today's political and environmental themes that characterise the global food system critique have echoes in the language of ecological activists of the 1970s'35. The need for food system change and how this change is discussed is very much aligned with the counterculture movements of the past.

Belasco stated that 'to be self-sustaining, a cuisine needs more than ideas about food; it also needs the food itself'36. The organic food movement in the 1970s was another form of counterculture to the industrialised food system. Kauffman describes those who started the organic food movement as 'back-to-the-landers37. His account of the people seated at the start of the 'Natural Organic Farming Association' in the USA in 1971 gives us an insight into the activists who started this movement. "The majority of people seated around him [Kaymen] were hirsute, homespun, and under the age of thirty. They had fled the cities for the land a few years before"38. This movement started the organic movement in America and shaped its values. It was led by hundreds of back-to-the-landers who brought their ideas and counterculture about food, politics, and community.

The soil association, a central backbone to the UK’s organic movement was founded in 1943 by a pioneering female farmer, Eve Balfour39. Her book Living Soil documented her own experience of experimental farming that involved non-chemical methods. However, the number of organic farmers remained small and it wasn’t until the social unrest of the late 1960s, leading up to the oil crisis of 1973, that the UK saw the “back to nature” philosophy of the modern environmental movement40. In the mid-1980s, a number of supermarkets including Tesco began to stock organic food, bringing the movement into the mainstream41.

Back in America, the lack of organic farming knowledge resulted in the decline in the number of new countercultural communes that had been created and devoted to organic

34 Yount-Andre, C. (2021). Moral Orders of Multinationals: Registers of Value in Corporate Food Production. Signs and Society. Signs and Society, 9(10.1086/713153), pp.89–117. Pg.96 35 Warren James Belasco (2006). Appetite for change: how the counterculture took on the food industry. 2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

36 Ibid. Chapter 4 pg.10 37 Kauffman, J. (2018). Hippie food: how back-to-the-landers, longhairs, and revolutionaries changed the way we eat. New York: William Morrow, An Imprint Of Harpercollins Publishers. Pg. 169 38 Ibid. pg. 170 39 Soil Association (n.d.). Our history | Soil Association. [online] www.soilassociation.org. Available at: https://www.soilassociation.org/who-we-are/our-history/.

40 politics.co.uk (n.d.). Organic Farming - All you need to know. [online] Politics.co.uk. Available at: https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/organic-farming/ [Accessed 10 Jan. 2022].

41 Soil Association (n.d.). Our history | Soil Association. [online] www.soilassociation.org. Available at: https://www.soilassociation.org/who-we-are/our-history/.

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farming in the early 197042s. The labour intensity of some organic methods also emerged as a barrier to success. Even within the farming community, organic farming did not become mainstream. Many farmers still cite the overall more expensive inputs and lack of stable outputs to this day.

It seems that the urge to retain good food against the backdrop of the global food system was not only part of American and British counter culturalism but also on the European continent. In 1983, Carlo Petrini and Italian activists started the Slow Food Movement. The values that underpinned the movement were 'preserving regional traditions, good food, gastronomic pleasure and a slow pace of life'43. As suggested by 'Food Activism' writer Carole Counihan, 'Democracy is expressed, through consumer choice, regulation of food production, control of food distribution, and goals for universal access to resources'44. Like the counterculture movements in America and Britain, the slow food movement enables a democracy through food.

The above movements show the desire to use food for social, political and economic change throughout history. They are all rooted in the counterculture movements of the past. These ideas about food and the food system are still present in food system change today. This dissertation will evaluate the similarities and differences of modern-day food systems’ change to these movements in future chapters. However, this chapter only shows a one-sided story about food; Organic, Vegetarian, and Coop culture, which are still not the mainstream and were not even during the counterculture movements. The next chapter will explore the other side of the food story, one of mainstream food culture, taste and consumer choices. Arguably this is still the most predominant ‘foodie’ type today.

42 Warren James Belasco (2006). Appetite for change: how the counterculture took on the food industry. 2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

43 https://www.slowfood.org.uk/about/about/what-we-do/ 44 Counihan, C. and Siniscalchi, V. (2014). Food activism: agency, democracy and economy. London, Uk ; New York, Ny: Bloomsbury Academic. Chapter 1. pg 6

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Chapter 3: Consume not Consommé, food culture in the 1980s and 1990’s In this chapter I will focus on the food culture of 1980s and 1990s Britiain, I will be looking at the expansion of mass-consumerism, industrialised foods, dining out and cultural values around eating.

Suppose counterculturalism is about slow, organic, back to the land food and eating. In that case, mainstream food culture is arguably about mass-produced, consumer commodities much like other parts of our lives such as cars. Food author Claire Catterall describes food products on supermarket shelves as having the same 'designed process as a Ford Motor Car'45. Processed food goes through similar researching, designing, processing and marketing as other mass-produced products. By the end of it, like oil used in plastic, potatoes used in Pringles (which only arrived in the UK in 199146) are almost unrecognisable from their raw ingredients.

A brief dip into food processing by food columnist and author Joanna Blythman in her book, 'Swallow This', allows us to see the extent to which this food is nothing like the homemade, nutrient-dense food that activists of the past cherished.

'In the same way that you will never see a stray onion skin lying around the floor, you're extremely unlikely to see an eggshell either. Eggs are supplied to food manufacturers in many forms, but almost never in their original packaging.

Instead, they come in powders, with added sugar, for instance, or as albumen-only special 'high gel' products for whipping. Liquid eggs will be pasteurised, yolk only, whites only, frozen or chilled, or with 'extended shelf life' (one month), whatever is easiest’47

45 Catterall, C. (1999). Food: design and culture. London: Laurence King Pub. Association With Glasgow. Pg. 23 46 Wilson, Bee. 2020. “How Ultra-Processed Food Took over Your Shopping Basket,” The Guardian <https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/feb/13/how-ultra-processed-food-took-over-your-shopping-basket-brazilcarlos-monteiro> 47 Blythman, J. (2015) Swallow This, HarperCollins Publishers. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/693624/swallow-this-pdf (Accessed: 11 January 2022

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Figure 3 'Lure of the Aisles' Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

An enjoyment of consumerism, a more affluent nation and a post-second world war fear of running out was the perfect storm for the 1980s that propelled Tesco to the food giant we know today. As guardian columinist Anne Perkins observes, ‘Tesco’s glory years almost exactly match the dominance of Thatcherism48’, Margaret Thatcher, herself a daughter of a grocer and a chemist by training, became Prime Minister in May 1979.49 She believed in an ideology of the free market and freedom of choice. Privatisation and the deregulation of the state was key to Thatcher’s policies, which bled into public utilities but most importantly for Tesco, planning regulations50. Local planning in the UK in the 1980s was focused on creating zones that allowed for more relaxed laws and public money being spent to bring the private sector back into deprived urban areas, dismantling big local authority power51.

The 'Diffusion of Innovation', is a behavioural change theory based on a bell curve that tracks the rate that new ideas become mainstream52. It shows us how ideas are developed and spread over time as a product gains momentum in society. If we plotted food onto this bellcurve, we could see changes throughout the decades. Let's look at innovators such as Cranks Wholefoods, for instance. We can see their food innovations travel along the bell curve to the end state of 'the late majority' as supermarkets, restaurants, and ready meals were developed around vegetarianism.

48 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/22/tesco-thatcherism-6-38-bn-loss-shopping 49 https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/margaret-thatcher-sworn-in 50 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40113491 51 A key-person involved in this deregulation during this period was Dame Shirley Porter, the daughter of Jack Cohen the founder of Tesco. She fronted the dismantling of The London Borough of Westminster Council under her premiership of Leader of the City Council between 1983-91 .

52 LaMorte, Wayne. 2019. “Diffusion of Innovation Theory,” Sphweb.bumc.bu.edu (Boston University School of Public Health)

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Cranks Wholefoods Vegetarian Movement

Vegetarian Ready Meals

Figure 4 Diffusion of Innovation Bell Curve (Source: http://blog.leanmonitor.com/early-adopters-allies-launchingproduct/)

The global food system and the players within in it often adopt what has been created in order to keep up with mass-consumer trends and to subvert movements that try to change the way it works. This is even noticeable in the first large out-of-town supermarkets created in the 1980s, unlike today’s space age looking white boxes, these supermarkets adoped the faux rustic aesthetic suggestive of natural ingredients and processes, rather than industrial ones. Tesco supermarkets looked more like Kentish Barns than large corporate shopping spaces.

Figure 5 'Kentish Barn' Tesco in 1995 in Burton-on-Trent (original photo - Staffordshire Live)

The 1990s saw an increase in this quick, mass-produced menu. In 1995, 4,596 new food and drink products were launched onto the British market, a whopping 88 new foods a week53. A report titled 'Eating into the Millenium' in 1997 suggested that nearly half of the UK eat their evening meals in front of the TV. With a third of people eating more takeaways

53 Catterall, C. (1999). Food: design and culture. London: Laurence King Pub. Association With Glasgow. Pg 24

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than in 1992. In 1999, a million pounds a day was being spent on pre-chilled dinners for one54.

The majority of British citizens lapped up the convenience food, offered to them as ‘lavish meals’, ‘cooked by chefs so you don’t have to’ without the knowledge of what they were eating. As Carolyn Steel points out ‘few of us are equipped to negotiate the minefield of industrial food’55. Arguably in Britain, and presumably by design, people have lost the knowledge of what is good for their bodies, food cultures from the past allowed people to easily understand what they were eating and why.

When we look at mainstream food spending it tells a very different story to one that the average ‘British Foodie’ might be proud of. We spend very little on food compared to our past, as Steel suggests one of the key problems to a better food future is our ideas around how cheap food should be. For instance, ‘in 1950, the British spent between 30 to 50 per cent of their income on food, today we spend 9 per cent (the least in Europe)’56.

The National Food survey tells an interesting story about how food spending changed between 1974 and 2000 when it ultimately stopped. According to the survey undertaken every year by Defra57, 13.3p per person per week was spent on processed vegetables on average in 1974, compared to 103.1p in 1999. Conceivably, the fact that the National Food Survey didn't start tracking things like confectionary until 199258, shows how limited spending was on these items until that time. Even in this short space, though, spending on these items went from 23.5p per person per household to 36.5p per person per household by 200059.

Amazingly, the 1990s saw the growth of overall interest in food, 1990 saw the launch of the TV Food Network60. It was the decade of the proliferation of TV chefs as national celebrities. ‘Ready Steady Cook’ came onto British screens in 1994, showcasing ways to make a 2-course meal out of a random bag of shopping chosen by an average shopper who looked perplexed at having to chop onions and add salt. The irony of this fascination with food when few people seemed to cook and large parts of the population were tucking into ready meals every night was not lost on some people at the time. In her book ‘Food Design and Culture’ written in 1999, Claire Catterall writes ‘, It is ironic that a time when the traditional role played by food in our culture and society is disappearing, we are becoming obsessive gourmands’61.

In 1993, British academic and cultural critic John Bayley wrote, ‘Food like sex is mainly in the head. Or if that seems exaggerated, what about the thought that thinking about food is the modern growth industry62” it was the 1990s where we saw food consumerism grow, impact the economy and change British culture. Food altered in the form of TV, cookbooks and dining out.

The London dining scene was arguably transformed by the influence of the British design entrepreneur Sir Terence Conran. Conran dominated London’s food scene with ‘megabrasseries’63 serving cheaper, more accessible dining to the middle-classes. His restaurants offered a different dining experience, different cuisine and none fell under the 54 Ibid, pg.26 55 Steel, Carolyn. 2021. SITOPIA: How Food Can Save the World. (S.L.: Vintage) pg.57 56 Steel, Carolyn. 2021. SITOPIA: How Food Can Save the World. (S.L.: Vintage) pg.168 57DEFRA - UK GOVERNMENT. 2013. “National Food Survey - Archives,” Nationalarchives.gov.uk 58 DEFRA - UK GOV. 2017. “75 Years of Family Food,” 59 DEFRA - UK GOVERNMENT. 2013. “National Food Survey - Archives,” Nationalarchives.gov.uk 60 https://tastecooking.com/1990s-moments-changed-way-think-food/ 61 Catterall, C. (1999). Food: design and culture. London: Laurence King Pub. Association With Glasgow. Pg. 26 62 Bayley, John. 2018. Foodists: Writing about Eating from the London Review of Books (London: London Review Of Books) pg.34 (original article, 25.2.1993) 63 https://www.standard.co.uk/reveller/restaurants/goodbye-to-conranisation-6341004.html

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same ‘brand feel’64. Conran’s megabrasseries created a food culture of their own in what was a desolate London at that time. His restaurants put London on the gastronomic map and led to a food economy boom in the city65.

Figure 6 Evening Standard Newspaper Article from 1992 - Terence Conran

Conran designed his food empire in the same way as he designed for habitat; one commentator at the time suggested that if he couldn’t find the suitable knives and forks, he created them himself66. This ‘Conranisation’ of London’s food fitted with the times; it matched the fast-paced juggernaut of consumerism of the 1990s and the ‘Cool Britannia’ ideals of the Blair government. It was probably not a coincidence that Tony Blair chose Conran’s Le Pont de la Tour restaurant to dine with Hilary and Bill Clinton during their visit to the UK in 199767.

The global food system is often blamed for destroying heritage in food, changing our diets and creating food that highly-marketable for their own profits. This is arguably the case, but changes to affluence and the desire in the middle-classes to eat novelty and impress others cannot be overlooked. It is clear from the ‘Conranisation’ of food that in the 80s and 90s there was a drive to eat differently. As French Chef Auguste Escoffer pointed out there is a clamour for novelty from wealthy diners ‘with their blasé palates or anxiety to impress their guests’68.

The next chapter skips a few decades forwards to decipher the mainstream food scene between the 2010s and the present day, evaluating similarities and differences between the past.

64 https://www.thecaterer.com/news/restaurant/sir-terence-conran 65 https://www.hardens.com/uk-london/12-09-2020/rip-sir-terence-conran/ 66 Ibid 67 https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/national-archives-bill-clinton-turned-down-tea-with-the-queen-during-cool-britanniasummit-with-tony-blair-1110572 68 Pen Vogler. 2021. Scoff : A History of Food and Class in Britain (London: Atlantic Books) pg. 7

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Section 2: Global Food today, still here tomorrow?

Chapter 4: Has anything changed?

In this chapter I will concentrate on the food of the present day, evaluating what has changed and what has stayed the same. I will assess the reasons why people and organisations feel that they need to redesign it.

The past is a two-sided story, one of the transnational conglomerates, food clusters like Tesco and the British people taking mass-consumerism as food to the heart of their society and culture. The other is of counter-culturalism, warnings about industrialised food and ‘redesigning’ an alternative in the hope that people will adopt it.

Arguably, the present tells a very similar story, as Blythman points out 51% of all savoury snacks and crisps consumed within Europe are consumed within the UK69 and yet up and down the country, including in Glasgow, local authorities are creating ‘City Food Plans’ in the hope to redesign local food70. The city food plans heed very little from the past in terms of food system change. Created by people working in food, or with a belief that food change will simply be adopted by those outside of the counterculture.

Glasgow’s City Food plan launched in 2021, was created in collaboration between Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Centre for Population Health and an organisation called Good Food For All71. With limited consultation, it only got 600 responses from Glasgow citizens, yet it focuses on changing the food system for local citizens. When interviewed, a spokes person for the city food plan said; “We didn’t have the ability to engage with citizens because of covid and lockdowns, as part of the 10 year plan we have created we will now engage with them. We have plans to get people on board with this plan. We did use social media to try and get responses.72” It has similar hopes of historical food changes like the National Organic Farming Association in the 1970s or Eve Balfour’s ideas on changing the way we create food, even similar to Cranks the concept that everyone will follow if you create a movement. The difference is that a local authority made this plan, and ultimately its effect will have ripple effects throughout the city. Conceivably, the flaw in the plan might be the lessons from the past, that most of the British public are happy with their tv dinners.

Arguably, what we have today is a two-tiered system in terms of food and food choices, as chef and food inclusion campaigner Angela Harnett says ‘Quality, affordable food should be available to everyone, and it’s not in the UK unlike other countries’73. In Britain, there are a clear class divisions even when it comes to the weekly shop. Waitrose, a high-end supermarket offering a better quality range of food is often found in wealthy places, in Glasgow for instance Waitrose can be found in the west-end on trendy Byres road and in an affluent northern suburb called Milngavie. On the lower end of the scale, even below Tesco we have Farmfoods, often in places much more deprived and places considered food deserts. Farmfoods offers mainly frozen, cheap food that most affluent people would not go and buy. Even at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when the Scottish Government 69 Blythman, Joanna. 2006. Bad Food Britain (London: Fourth Estate 70 http://goodfoodforall.co.uk/home/glasgow-city-food-plan 71 Ibid 72 Interview with Siobhan Boyle, NHS GCC by Gabby Morris on 7th July 2021.

73 Dillon, Sheila. 2022. “BBC Food Programme: Life through Food with Angela Harnett,” ed. by Natalie Donovan (BBC Food Programme)

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made provisions to feed families in food poverty, they sent councils Farmfoods vouchers74.

In March 2020, the United Kingdom went into a national lockdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Food thrust into the forefront of everyone's minds. The media reported our collective sense of doing this together, from mutual aid groups delivering food parcels to the vulnerable75 to swapping banana bread recipes76 and yeast shortages77.

Nevertheless, the flip-side showed scenes of panic buying food78, empty grocery shelves and a serious rise in food scarcity and foodbank usage which affected 4.6 Million adults in the first 6 months of the pandemic79. By 14th August 2021, 11.6 million people were furloughed by the government, at home, being paid 80-100% of their salaries80, arguably instead of becoming back-to-the-landers in their back-gardens, most as the conservative journalist and provocateur Peter Hitchins exlained, were ‘sipping chablis by the wisteria in their gardens’81 and ordering takeaway.

Figure 7 Image of empty Sainsbury's Shelves in the Pandemic by Gary Carlton

Large corporations did well during the pandemic. If anyone hoped that the majority of British people would use their extra time to cook food and make better choices, may have had those dashed by the news of the rise in Deliveroo orders to 71 million in the first

74 Stewart, Catriona. 2020. “Council Takes Delivery of 20,000 Farmfoods Vouchers for Vulnerable Glasgow Families,” 75 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/mutual-aid-coronavirus-pandemic-rebecca-solnit 76 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-8300967/Banana-bread-tops-list-searched-recipes-lockdown.html 77 https://qz.com/1825387/stocking-up-on-food-for-coronavirus-led-to-a-yeast-shortage/ 78 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/apr/03/off-our-trolleys-what-stockpiling-in-the-coronavirus-crisis-revealsabout-us 79 https://foodfoundation.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-10/FF_Impact-of-Covid_FINAL.pdf 80 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116638/uk-number-of-people-on-furlough/ 81 https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/1376660574906560515?s=20

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quarter of 202182 and Tesco expanding by 22% due to pandemic spending83. Despite the shock of the pandemic the majority of people’s eating habits didn’t change.

It is early days for the present; it is hard to predict what influences will take hold and how plans like Glasgow's food plan will affect real change. Looking and reflecting on the past, it can feel as though we are in a cyclical motion, going around the same issues. In reality, it may be that it is more like a rectangle, with different opinions on each side trying to pull those in the middle towards them. So far, the corporate, global food system side has won out, and it is hard to imagine how that power balance might change. Movements like Organic, Vegetarianism, Regenerative farming, those shouting about the impact of food on the climate and not even a pandemic have not swayed the British public to change their stance.

However, it is the culmination of all these decades of food culture, food system imbalance, environmental damafe and large food corporations having most of the power that has increased the number of people and organisations trying to redesign the food system.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-9473601/Deliveroos-drivers-ploughed-71MILLION-ordersquarter.html 83 https://internetretailing.net/retail-resilience/retail-resilience/tesco-ecommerce-grows-22-after-lockdown-expansion23321 82

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Section 3: (Re)Designing Food and the Food System Chapter 5: Food Design and Designers Food design and food designers that are starting to emerge in order to take on this socioeconomic wicked problem. As set out in the introduction, section three of this dissertation will evaluate whether design can be the intervention that truly changes the system, not just formal design from designers, but community grassroots designers too.

This chapter will focus on those food designers and look at their methods for change.

Design early on has been seen as a problem solver, changing what is currently there and making things different. As Herbert Simon suggests, design is concerned with ‘how things ought to be’84. However, like Simon misses a key part of design today, so do many designers. They miss the role it has to play in the ‘field of culture’ and the designing of ‘meaning and language’85.

Throughout this dissertation, the notion that simply putting out an idea of an alternative, or creating a solution to a perceived problem will solve the issues of the food system has been quashed. The fundamental flaw in most of the plans has been the reception and uptake of those changes. Fifty nine years from some of the first counterculture movements, the food juggernaut is still powering through British Society. Potentially it is bigger and stronger than in the past, and people are further away from their cultural roots.

Design practices have been ‘shaped by societal, economic, political and ecological needs’86, and designers find themselves with the burning desire to solve wicked problems like the food system. Taking a more ‘meaning and language’ approach, designers have a role in challenging the status quo. This is often done by ‘projecting into the future’87 through speculative design. As examples, speculative designers like Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby have considered how food will be eaten in the future with their project “Foragers”88, and London based design practice, Liminal Space, created speculative products for their workshops on ‘Genome Edited Foods’89, to get people thinking about this potential future.

Food is becoming a hot topic and is being harnessed for social change by designers, a simple google trends search shows that the term ‘Food System Redesign’ and ‘Food System Change’ has been searched more and more in the last decade90.

Designers now focused solely on food system design are popping up around the globe.

Food Design Nation (FDN) started in January 2021 and is a collaborative hybrid platform connecting global food creatives to design better food futures91. FDN founder is Jashan Shippy, ‘spearheading the global Food Design movement92’. It has over 375 designers connected into the network, looking at everything from changing food products to citizen engagement around local food. Reminiscent of communities in the 1960s sharing knowledge on communal living, vegetarian diets, organic food and how to subvert the food system through coops, Food Design Nation is setting out on ‘an exploration 84 Simon, Herbert A, and John Laird. 1969. The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Mit Press) 85 Ezio Manzini. 2015. Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.) ; London: Mit Press, Cop) pg. 34 86 Yee, Joyce, Emma Jefferies, and Lauren Tan. 2013. Design Transitions (Amsterdam: Bis Publ) pg.5 87 Yee, Joyce, Emma Jefferies, and Lauren Tan. 2013. Design Transitions (Amsterdam: Bis Publ) pg.5 88 Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. 2009. “Designs for an Overpopulated Planet: Foragers, 2009.”

89 Liminal Space. 2020. “Genome Edited Foods,” 90 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2009-09-09%202022-01-25&q=food%20system%20change 91 https://www.fooddesignnation.com/ 92 https://www.sugarandspace.in/

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harnessing human possibilities through meaningful change’. Food Design Nation is an early movement. It will be interesting to see whether these designers can harness past interventions differently. Design has the power to bring ordinary people together to make a change. However, it has to understand why change is needed and who is making the changes first, not bringing about designers’ egos or biases.

Figure 8 Google Trends, showing 'Food System Redesign' searches on Google from 2009 (earliest data) -2022 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2009-09-09%202022-01-25&q=food%20system%20design

Figure 9 Google Trends, showing 'Food System Change' searches on Google from 2009 (earliest data) - 2022 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2009-09-09%202022-01-25&q=food%20system%20change

Food itself is also being redesigned, ‘Clean Meat’ is a designed meat coined as the modernernising of meat by the Good Food Institute, an American not-for-profit set up to invest in clean meat products93. When they started there was just one company on the market, now there are over 2594. Clean meat is lab-grown meat using starter cells from cattle to grow them into meat products that even vegans might eat. It is seen as a better alternative by some, not just for animals but for the environment. However, arguably this could be another ‘global power’ in the making. When author Jenny Kleeman met the owner of JUST meat, she asked him if he wanted to be the biggest meat producer in the world and his response ‘Definitely’95.

93 Good Food Institute. [n.d.]. “Plant-Based and Cultivated Meat Innovation | GFI,” Gfi.org <https://gfi.org/> 94 Kleeman, Jenny. 2021. SEX ROBOTS & VEGAN MEAT : Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex & Death. (S.L.: Picador) pg.105 95 Kleeman, Jenny. 2021. SEX ROBOTS & VEGAN MEAT : Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex & Death. (S.L.: Picador) pg.130

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In 2006 James King looked at in-vitro meat through art with his Moma exhibition ‘Dressing the meat of tomorrow’. He used visual images to explore, and thus provoke thought among viewers, how meat should be served or what it might look like. His exhibition questioned how in-vitro meat might work; "A mobile magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit scours the countryside looking for the most beautiful examples of livestock. The selected specimen is scanned from head to toe, and accurate cross-sectional images of its inner organs are generated to create molds for the in vitro meat. We might still want to re-create a familiar shape to better remind us where the 'artificial' meat came from."96 These designers are trying to find ways to redesign the food system, engage citizens and use speculative and critical design to provoke thought about what might be next for us and our food system. As a fairly new field, it is difficult to know the impact on the people they reach, it might be that the masses are not seeing speculative art in galleries, but engagements like those done by liminal space in public spaces could have an impact.

However, their methods are valuable ways to engage people without biases that are more likely to be found in grassroots redesigning.

96 MOMA: Museum of Modern Art. 2006. “James King, Design Interactions Department, Royal College of Art. Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow (Model). 2006

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Chapter 6: Food Jams and Community Gardens This chapter will focus on those Grassroots designers and their organisations, referring to case studies and experiences of their design events to evaluate their methods and focus on how they are trying to redesign the food system locally in Glasgow.

There are similarities with the past, and some missions echo the counterculture aforementioned in this dissertation. The short snippets in appendix 197give insight into what is happening in Glasgow and Scotland. This chapter includes some first-person accounts of my observations of these organisations and interviews.

Figure 10 Design Mode Map by Ezio Manzini, photographed by Gabby Morris from "Design When Everybody Designs" pg. 40

Glasgow Community Food Network Food Jam One of the grassroots organisations working in Glasgow is Glasgow Community Food Network98, they held a Food and Climate Action event with a Food Jam delivered by Glasgow City Council’s design team the Centre for Civic Innovation (CCI) on 7th Novemnber 202199. I was working for the CCI and able to attend the event and be a part of the ‘Food Jam’ which included a range of activities for citizens of Greater Pollok to engage in food redesign in their local areas. Lots of these activities were inspired the design practice of participatory theories; using co-design methods and engagement tools100. Another tool used was a postcard, asking citizens to imagine their future of food in Glasgow and consider what the barriers to growing food in their area, this methodology is similar to a designed cultural probe, where participants give information without being prompted by a person, it is also a useful way of doing research without the designer being present.

97 See Appendix 1 98 Ibid 99 See Appendix 2; Case Study of Event by Gabby Morris 100 Strcikerden, Mark 2012. This Is Service Design Thinking, 1st edn (BIS Publishers) <https://www.perlego.com/book/1997073/this-is-service-design-thinking-pdf> [accessed 22 January 2022]

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Figure 11 Photo of Gabby Morris at Food Jam on 7th November 2021 photo by Heather Hamilton

Unfortunately, there was a lack of engagement in the event. So most people who filled out the postcards were people attending the event as part of their organisation; the given ideas included things like ‘getting more access to greenspace’, ‘growing more produce’ and having ‘local food markets’101. It is pretty clear from this what these people’s agenda is around food and food redesigns in cities. It is hard to imagine that those living in less affluent ways would be as quick to desire food growing compared to getting access to food. However, in an interview with a worker from the South West Food Bank in March 2021, when questioned about the idea of growing food in the city Claire responded

101 Taken from notes by Gabby Morris from the event on 7th November 2021

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.... ‘…if I have a single mother with three children come into the food bank, what am I meant to give her a pack of seeds. Most people can’t afford electricity to cook, let alone growing their own food or picking it from community trees. We need better ideas’102.

Resonant with the past, this event felt similar to what the author Kauffman might have described from the Organic movement in the 1960s, filled with environmentally aware white-middle class people—trying to understand food landscapes in Glasgow, and arguably, through quizzes, teaching other citizens about the food.

During the event, I was reminded of the words by Social Class and Food Writer Pen Vogler, who describes the ‘village green, food campaigning brigade’ trying to change people’s views on food; “There is a food campaigning brigade in every generation that wants to educate, shame, and cajole a different set of people out of their Turkey Twizzlers and burgers, takeaway fried chicken and TV dinners. In the Twenty-first century, governments have preferred the social pressure of the village green to shame or nudge individuals into making the right choices rather than imposing top-down decisions”103 Conceivably, what is missing at events in this way is understanding people’s values, opinions, tastes, and cultures around food and understanding what people want in terms of their food choices without bias. As this dissertation has identified throughout the decades’ people’s food culture and food choices have stayed in line with the global food system, maybe because it offers them what they want. Ideals about vegetarianism, organic farming and even climate change have not necessarily become mainstream, or if they have, the food system has absorbed them.

Glasgow’s Future Potluck At a much smaller level, The Glasgow School of Art’s MDes programme this year focused on redesigning local food systems in Glasgow, asking students via their brief to think about this topic and engage organisations and citizens in the city to come up with ideas.

On 8th December 2021, I attended an event run by MDes Product Design students for Glasgow’s Food Futures project. The event was a potluck and invited a range of people to attend, mainly from local organisations in Glasgow and wider areas working in food and some citizens working in community gardens104. Similar to the food jam run by Glasgow Community Food Network, but a more formalised invitation-only event, people were asked to engage in a series of design-led activities to think about local food.

Interview with Claire from South West Food Bank on 10th March 2021 Pen Vogler. 2021. Scoff : A History of Food and Class in Britain (London: Atlantic Books) pg. 183 104 See appendix 2: Case Study by Gabby Morris 102

103

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Figure 12 Photo of Food Engagements at the Glasgow Potluck on 8th December 2021. Photo by Gabby Morris

The first visible impression was the people who attended the event, without feeling as though this dissertation has become stuck in a groundhog day narrative; they were white, middle-class professionals with an understanding of food and clearly a desire to change it. During lunch conversations, a lot of people talked about ‘growing’, ‘market gardens’, ‘saving hertiage seeds’ and ‘the economic value of local food systems’.

Participants were first asked to do a mapping exercise to situate themselves in Glasgow and understand their links to food in the city. The mapping exercise seemed to be a great way to connect the different people working in food in the city together, like a metaphor for the global food system making local connections feels like the right approach to potentially having a much more significant impact. So many organisations work in silos, and having designers bring people together feels like a valuable tool in solving challenges as a collective.

Other activities drew on co-design methodologies and participatory design theories to engage people in the redesign process. Participants then answered questions around 28

‘Imagining the Future of Food in Glasgow’, questions included “What is happening in the imagined future?”, “Who is is involved?” and “What are the key places/spaces?”.

During these activities, the thing that struck me about the ideas were the ways that the participants forgot about the people on the outside of the food redesign bubble. After hearing from a group about the plans to grow food in the city ‘plum trees you could pick food from on Sauchiehall street’ and creating ’15-minute neighbourhoods where people have an abundance of free food’, I asked a question about how citizens might be engaged in this, whether citizen’s wanted this.

My question was simple; “How will you get citizens to engage in this change within 10 years?”, the answer “We didn’t discuss that we just presumed they would”.

Just as there was in the Glasgow City Food plan and lots of plans around food in the city, arguably there is a lack of understanding about what people want. Instead, there is a desire to impose what they feel people need. The global food system, not through selflessness but profit, does not market’ what people should do or judge them for their choice. This approach, in the end, could be its superpower in remaining the more mainstream player in our food system.

In these moments I am reminded of the French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his words on explaining why people might choose food that is not nourishing, or not ‘right’ for them compared to those that have made choices they feel are better, more inline with what is ‘right’. He says; “[Hedonism] is the only philosophy conceivable to those who 'have no future' and, in any case, little to expect from the future. The being-in-the-present which is affirmed in the readiness to take advantage of the good times and take time as it comes is, in itself, an affirmation of solidarity with others ( who are often the only present guarantee against the threats of the future) , inasmuch as this temporal immanentism is a recognition of the limits which define the condition”105.

What is clear from these small event examples and the historical knowledge in this dissertation is that we need to be mindful of the added biases to the redesign. We need to make sure that at any level, including the grassroots, people are represented and understood without shame or judgement. We need to remove the social class from the debate. Like the mapping exercise at the second event, connections should be designed between people and organisations for impact. A rhizome of its own needs to be created for grassroots organisations to deliver what they are trying to achieve. However, other voices from outside the redesign bubble need should be considered, especially those who are much more likely to be affected. This intersection is where designers and the designer's role could potentially play a much more valuable part in redesigning than grassroots organisations alone.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction : A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London ; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group) pg. 183

105

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Food for thought – A Conclusion Exploring the historical food challenges and the changes that have taken place over the last decades since the second world war has helped me understand the motivations of those trying to change it and those living within its utopian state of food. It is clear from this dissertation that the powers within the global food system have resisted change throughout the decades simply by absorbing or deflecting them. It is clear that the same conversations have taken place throughout history, and we can see small changes in the way we eat, but the point of these conversations may be lost in translation from 'wholefoods' to 'wholefood ready meals'.

Having studied and evaluated the past and present interventions, I will seek to envision the future in this conclusion. I see design playing a role in the future by understanding people and marrying this with behavioural change, self-actualisation, and empowerment of those people. Speculative design is one method that might help show people a different vision, but bringing people along to sit at the table through proper participatory methods that reflect the ideals and the desires of a cross-section of individuals might be more effective.

This dissertation has been a valuable exercise in learning about different changes in the food system throughout history, and it has made me consider where my design practice could play a role. Having researched and written this dissertation, I have learnt a lot about systems, relationships, scope and changes and as a way of feeding forward. I want to conclude with ideas for the future.

As food for thought, I would like to speculate on how to take on these learnings as a potential food design project. I will reflect on a potential hybrid solution or system from the interventions I have studied. As a designer, I will seek to think about the best interventions and evaluate what a better-designed model might be and achieve.

In terms of the present-day examples evaluated in this dissertation, the two events had a similar key goal of getting citizens engaged in food and the food system redesign to make it about their own choices. A critical element that I feel is missing in these engagements is the design question "How does one persuade people in ways they find appealing and not reject as too snobby?". Often from my experiences at food design events, is the feeling that there is still a top-down approach through the nature of the engagement. Citizens come along to hear about "the right choices" or the "better ways food systems should be.

Then they are asked about their thoughts and feelings on the solutions presented. It is rare to see citizens themselves holding these events. A designed outcome that offers people the ability to self-actualise their ideas, choices and aspirations for their local or regional food system without or in addition to attending workshops could be a better way.

A project that focused on embedding change into communities in a way that is not managed or controlled from a top-down organisation would potentially work better. This embedded idea could even be a role, having someone into the community to facilitate change through design methods without enacting them on people.

This dissertation clearly shows that the food system has a Rhizomatic way of spreading a culture or ideas throughout society. There are many hidden ideas developed and spread about to make them feel like they want to eat or buy something. Another proposed design outcome would be to research how a designed rhizomatic system might counter the effectiveness of the food system. What if designers developed a way for cultural ideas and interactions to change the food system organically, through word-of-mouth or another form of social pressure. Similar to the broader culture change in the health domain around the poisons of the proletariat like tobacco. Designing a way to easily prioritise 30

changes in their food habits and food system habits, like the stop smoking movement, could be a way to make a significant change.

It is clear from the evaluation in this dissertation that everyone needs to be a part of the food system change. Like the German artist Joseph Beuys ideas on the social sculpture where everyone has a part in shaping it, design has a role in making sure everyone has a role in helping shape the food system. As designers, we have to make sure that everyone has a seat at the table and that seat offers an equitable opportunity. A project that develops a way for everyone to have a voice equitably, both locally and globally, would be a step in the right direction towards significant change. There is much power in the food system. Many people and organisations hold power, particularly those from affluent western nations. Those powers and biases should be removed from anything designed to discuss change as part of designing equity in this system.

Another key reoccurring theme in this dissertation is the idea or lack of idea about what most people want. Conceivably the British public has been pre-programmed by PR machines to reflect what they want people to think they want, and this is a significant hurdle in food system redesign. However, what can be lost in trying to change is understanding people's choices, motivations, tastes, cultures and opinions about food.

A research-led design project that looks at understanding what people want from their food and their food system would be a crucial endeavour in understanding how we can support change as designers. Food is personal. Understanding people's choices around food would potentially support more significant change than just trying to persuade people to do something different. As we have seen many people have tried to persuade and cajole and it has not had much of an impact.

This final research-led design idea could be the most viable in laying the foundation for an outcome with the ability to create significant change. This idea seems most likely for my practice going forward. This dissertation has made me consider this topic more and more as a basis for change. If we can understand what underlies people's food choices and how they feel about food. The ways they currently consume and enjoy food, their desires for a food system, and how to change that to compete against what we have now. I believe we can have an enormous change, socially, economically, and food. This change needs to be led by designers, without biases but with empathy.

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Appendices Appendix 1 – Short Studies of Local Food Organisations in Glasgow & Scotland Glasgow Locavore CIC Locavore, established in 2011, is set up to offer an organic alternative system to the mainstream supermarket106. They have 3 shops in the city and are opening a further 3 shops across the central belt and Edinburgh. Plus a veg box scheme, floristry department and a market garden. In 2021 they launched their ‘Bigger Plan’ setting out targets for the next two years, in the hope of opening 10 new stores in Scotland and growing to meet demand. The mission in the bigger plan reads; “Locavore exists to build more sustainable food networks which are better for the environment, society, local communities and their economies. In short, we want a food system which feeds us all while also nourishing a healthy, fair and prosperous environment, society and economy.107” In 2016, Locavore moved their business model away from their namesake of ‘local first’ to a focus on Organic products that consumers would like to eat and expect to find in a supermarket108. As a member of the soil association, arguably they see organic food in the way that the back-to-the-landers did in the 1970s. The mission statement echoes the rhetoric used in the past when talking about the move from industrialised foods to organic, focusing on communities, economies and the environment.

Similar to the descriptions offered by Kauffman of the people who started the Natural Organic Association in the ’60s, when asked about the demographics of Locavore, a staff member stated; “Our customer base is largely made up of two groups; young-environmentally aware greens and older, well-off middle-class people”109.

An observation of their shops in Glasgow tells a similar story of the people who work for Locavore. Most staff could be described under the first catergory; young, white, middleclass and caring about the environment110.

Certainly, the people who seem engaged the Locavore mission are not those that are into mass consumerism, heading home to have their ready meal infront of the Television. It might be early days for Locavore, only 10 years old last year, to know whether they can capture the mainstream market and subvert powerhouses like Waitrose and Tesco the Glasgow’s food system. Or whether they will become another counterculture movement like the ones describe previously in this dissertation.

Glasgow Community Food Network (GCFN) GCFN was established in 2017 and states that they ‘aim to give everyone in Glasgow improved, equal access to affordable healthy food’111. They do this by ‘bringing together practitioners and organisations in the private, public and third sectors along with other interested individuals to develop a flourishing food system in Glasgow’112.

Locavore CIC. 2020. Bigger Plan, Glasgow Locavore Ibid 108 Ibid 109 Interview with Sally Morris, VegBox Manager at Locavore CIC by Gabby Morris on 22nd December 2021.

110 Observational Research by Gabby Morris on 18th November 2021 at Garnethill & Govan Stores 111 Network, Glasgow Community Food. 2021. “About Us,” Glasgow Community Food Network 112 Ibid 106 107

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In 2021, they launched the Glasgow City Food Plan with Glasgow City Council, focused on creating better food for the people of Glasgow through growing, procuring and redesigning the local food system. Funded by the national lottery, GCFN have been running ‘Food and Climate Cafés’ in the city, getting citizens to think about the food system they would like to see come to fruition.

Glancing through GCFN social media tells a similar story to Locavore and that of Kauffman, most people look to be white, under the age of 50, wholesome and middleclass. Equipped with the right clothing, they appear to be environmentally conscious people who spend time outdoors113. Staff team pictures show mainly white, women of a certain age.

Nourish Scotland Nourish Scotland is a charity focusing on food policy and practice. They state they ‘work for a fair, healthy and sustainable food system that truly values nature and people’114.

Nourish Scotland use different approachs, that are similar to participatory design methods to understand people’s lived experience in food scarcity. They work in different areas of Scotland including Glasgow and have been extremely vocal about the Good Food Nation Bill, a bill currently going through the Scottish Parliament115.

On their website there are photos of their staff and board of trustees, similar to the descriptions given by Kauffman, almost everyone is white and under the age of 50, like Locavore and GCFN most of their staff appear to be women116.

113 114 115

Observations by Gabby Morris on 12th January 2021 of https://www.instagram.com/glasgowcommunityfoodnetwork/ Nourish Scotland Ltd. [n.d.]. “Vision and Aims,” Nourish Scotland https://www.nourishscotland.org/the-good-food-nation-bill-is-here/ Observations by Gabby Morris on 12th January 2021 of https://www.nourishscotland.org/meet-staff/

116

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Appendix 2 – Case Study of “Food Jam” by Glasgow Community Food Network & Centre for Civic Innovation.

Name of event

Community Food Jam / Food and Climate Action Cafe

Organisations involved

Glasgow Community Food Network Urban Roots CIC Centre for Civic Innovation RSPB

Date of Event

7th November 2021 (11-3pm)

Description of attendees

Mainly white, environmentally conscious people. Most of the attendees were people from organisations. There were about 10 children throughout the event.

CASE STUDY

Summary A brief summary of the event and what happened

Research Outcomes / Activities Outline any key outcomes, discussion points and facts pertaining to the event.

There were a range of different activities for people to do at the event, including food storytelling, food system games and quizzes and plotting food ideas onto a local map. It was hosted in a community garden in Greater Pollok, Glasgow. Urban Roots created a vegan meal for everyone attending the event.

1. Food Futures postcards were created to get people to think about their food futures in Greater Pollok. Two questions were asked; “What are the barriers to food in your area?”

“What would you need to start growing in your area” These were filled out and added to a post box, most of the people who filled them out were part of the organisations. The outcomes for this engagement was low, but people talked about needed access to greenspaces for growing, creating market gardens in the area and developing learning around food growing skills.

2. People were asked to talk about their favourite foods, this activity was simply putting a favourite food onto a board using a post-it note. Most people recorded

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their favourite foods as “Pizza” “Pasta” and “Prawns”, there were no responses that were not more indulgent or ‘junkfood’ based foods.

Quotes

None

Useful quotes from the event

Any other information Further information / important information

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None

Appendix 3 – Case Study of “Future Food Workshop” by GSA Innovation School, MDES students

Name of event

Glasgow Food Potluck

Organisations involved

MDes Product Design Innovation Centre for Civic Innovation

Date of Event

8th December 2021 (10-4pm)

Description of attendees

Mainly white, people who work in food in different capacities. Attendees were invited from a range of different Glasgow and Scottish food organisations including; •

Glasgow Community Food Network

•

South Seeds

•

RSPB

•

Seed Library

•

Blackthorn Salt

•

Locavore

•

Glasgow University

•

Glasgow City Council

•

Glasgow School of Art

Most attendees were people working in food organisations in Glasgow, there was only one person who was a citizen, she ran the Maryhill Community Garden. Two attendees had been part of writing the Glasgow City Food Plan, CASE STUDY Summary A brief summary of the event and what happened

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The event was a convivial sit around a table lunch event, people were given food and drinks and seated on a long bench.

The event started with an icebreaker and then led into a lunch discussion, this was really useful in connecting people and getting conversations going. Most conversations near my end of the table were about Food, Food Economies, discussions about people’s places of work and the food system.

After lunch participants were asked to map their organisation and their organisations food impact on to a map of Glasgow, drawing connections to eachother and to different food topics.

This led to some discussions about what people impact locally and in terms of people.

There was a short introduction to the project presented to the participants and a ‘Future Glasgow’ was presented, setting the scene for a later discussion around Food Futures in Glasgow.

The last activity got people into groups to discuss different changes at a Micro, Macro and Global level. Asking participants to reimagine food in Glasgow and what their ideas would need to be successful. People in the global group looked at larger policy change, infrastructure and the global food systems impact.

Research Outcomes / Acitivities

1. Food Mapping

Outline any key outcomes, discussion points and facts pertaining to the event.

Participants were asked “Who are you and where do you exist?” they used Vegetables to describe their food business and then mapped their impact on a system map.

This enabled participants to understand their place and the connections to it. I asked participants about this activity, below are their responses; “This helped me understand food in the wider system” “Interesting to see the influence and connection we all have in Glasgow” “There are definitely communities of interest and communities of impact. We all have very common goals and values” 2. Food Ideas Particpants were asked to choose a ‘Food Island’ to work on; Local, Regional and Global food islands that represented the different Micro, Marco and Global food systems. Each group was asked to dicuss what the future of these spaces might look like, they were prompted to think about key things;

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“Will they have new roles?”

“How will the islands connect?”

“Will there be bridges?”

“What are the key roles / stakeholders?”

This enabled participants to think about the future they wanted, but through discussion and connection make collective choices.

People discussed things about “policy, removing powers from global systems” and discussing key ideas like “regeneration”. One of the biggest problems that the groups talked about was in the global group – how to remove governments and power from the food system.

There was a lot of discussion about the idea of ‘Hyper-local’ Food, a key idea from the MDes team. People discussed whether this could full feed everyone in a the city and what impact it might have.

There seemed to be a lack of growing knowledge within the teams, a lot of discussion was had about where you could grow including Brownfield sites, with not a lot of knowledge on how you might convert those sites to being growing friendly i.e. producing crops People also discussed how they might get people to take part in this process. There was not a lot of consideration about ordinary, non-food people and whether they would adopt things like eating from plum trees in the centre of Glasgow.

The event ended once this had taken place and the MDes students informed the group they would take on the information given and design an outcome. A follow up session would be delivered for approval / feedback.

Quotes Useful quotes from the event

“The term regeneration that is being used does not work like this, the connections of the islands feel problematic to me because they miss out the fact that not everything can be infinitely recycled”.

“The global food system is powerful, you can do things locally but it is prevented by

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the global system. That is a crucial element to change” “It’s not just about fruit and veg it is about what people value” “You can’t just do something at a neighbourhood level, it might just some things but people have to adopt them and they won’t like it” “I can’t see growing food in neighbourhoods will make sense, people are not going to start doing it in masses and it won’t feed everyone” “My children should not know what foodbanks are and pantries should not be the council’s plan to feed everyone” Any other information Further information / important information

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None