Synopsis
“The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.” - William Gibson
What does the future of food look like? In order to find out, we enlisted the Corbin Hill Food Project to help us speculate on the idea during a tailored workshop.
The aim of the participatory futures workshop was to encourage and inspire employees at the Corbin Hill Food Project to amplify community members’ voices and encourage them to think about their work on a larger, longer scale.
Roles: workshop designer and facilitator.
Collaboration with: Yuxin Cheng, Jonas Voigt, Alyssa Kropp, & Mariana Gonzalez
Detailed Description
Partnering with local organization
We had the privilege to work with the Corbin Hill Food Project, a mixed model nonprofit / social enterprise that works to supply fresh, local food to those that need it most through its Farm Share and institutional programs. For them we developed an imaginary institute named “The Foodture Institute,” a play on "food" and "future" to mirror their focus and frame the workshop.
Workshop facilitation
The group visited Corbin Hill in their offices and ran an hour long workshop exploring the topics of food communities, technology, and agriculture in the future. During the workshop, the participants were divided into groups, picked a signal, imagined future professions 50 years from now, brainstormed potential futures using the futures wheel methodology, and created dioramas depicting one of these options. The materialization helped to represent their imaginations and to talk about their future scenarios.
Participants finally were asked to write themselves a postcard from the future as a supportive material for the future scenario they have created.
Workshop process
Future job title, Signal sharing, Futures wheel, Postcard from the future, Rapid prototyping
