Glasgow’s Future Potluck

‘…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.

102 Interview with Claire from South West Food Bank on 10th March 2021 103 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 27

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 ‘Imagining the Future 28

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.

105 Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction : A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London ; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group) pg. 183 29