This cookbook is founded on a two-day workshop – Experimental Food Design for Sustainable Futures – held online as part of the Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference in July 2020.
The workshop experimented with food as an accessible starting point from which to explore and articulate values, concerns, desires, and imaginaries associated with food-tech futures and climate resilience. Working remotely from our homes, we co-designed scenarios and collages; engaged in foraging walk-shops around our kitchens, pantries and gardens; and proposed diverse imaginative approaches to nurture transformation towards sustainable futures.
Each workshop day focused on a distinct theme: on day 1 –Fantastic(e)ating Food Futures: Reimagining Human Food Interactions – we examined interdependencies between food, eating, and social practices, critically engaging with future flourishing through food-tech innovation. On day 2 – Designing with More-than-Human Food Practices for Climate Resilience – we focused specifically on more-than-human food practices and how they could be incorporated into food systems.
The two workshop days were thematically intertwined and carefully designed to be complementary: the fantastic food future imaginaries co-created on day one laid the groundwork for our thinking about plausible more-than-human food practices on day two.
The workshop outcomes have been collectively compiled into the More-than-Human Food Futures Cookbook that you are reading right now. We would like to thank all workshop participants for bringing their energy, ideas and imaginations to the table. This cookbook is just a small sampling of our combined efforts, we hope it feeds your imagination and nourishes you during these challenging times.
In the spirit of fantastic(e)ating food futures, and expanding more-than-human food practices, this content is free to read and enjoy. However, if sharing, please acknowledge this work and the authors using this reference:
Markéta Dolejšová, Sjef van Gaalen, Danielle Wilde, Hilary Davis & Ferran Altarriba Bertran (2021). More-than-Human Food Futures Cookbook. Available at https://foodfutures.group/
Enjoy the reading!
Markéta, Sjef, Danielle, Hilary and Ferran
The cookbook editors
