[-empyre-] future scenario workshops and the imagination

[Amanda McDonald Crowley]

Marina!

Thanks so much for this link, and for another beautifully poetic future of food scenario, building so wonderfully on Shu Lea's engaging future scenario speculations.

it reminds me of a project I did with the ever fabulous [FoAM] collective in 2014. It was one of a series of "GastroLabs" I developed with New Media Scotland for the Edinburgh Science Festival. http://publicartaction.net/gastrolabsopensauces/

[FoAM], looked at a range of change drivers or food horizons, then categorised the drivers into STEEP (social, technological, environmental, economic and political) categories

They clustered the drivers thematically into “industrial, intensive and global”, “small, slow and local” and “open, transformative and translocal” and analysed the three clusters based on what they describe as a causal layered analysis.

This resulted in the development of four food futures scenarios. They worked with a local chef in Edinburg, Ginny, from Blue Sky Catering to develop a four course tasting menu. Maja, from [FoAM] then narrated a toast, or short speech before each course. The scenarios were: Continue; Collapse; Discipline; Transform

The project and research methodology is documented here: http://lib.fo.am/future_fabulators/food_futures

I would have invited Nik and Maja from [FoAM] to contribute to this discussion, actually. But they have taken 2016 as what they self-described as a year of laying fallow (from the lunar new year
in february), and describe their reasons here. https://medium.com/@foam/thriving-in-uncertainty-d74b75020b05#.pqsl1ttlk

Its a really wonderful piece of writing titled "Thriving in Uncertainty" 

They begin: "As the growth economy feeds on relentless expansion and promises the continuous availability of everything from strawberries to digital servants, the unremitting pace of contemporary lifestyles at the messy tail-end of global capitalism seems inevitable. It infects the way we deal with time; it affects our sense of values, ethics and purpose. The implacable pressure to produce, consume and communicate has lead to a work ethic where everything that is “not work” is viewed as an inactive, indulgent luxury. The urgency of our current economic, environmental and cultural predicaments prioritises action. Who can afford to idle away their time while it has been widely acknowledged that we are on the brink of crisis, conflict and collapse?"

They also describe it as a sabbatical year, but I much prefer the poetic "year of laying fallow". It makes so much more sense to understand that a fallow year is a necessary process to renew oneself, just as a year of laying a field fallow is necessary to its healthy ongoing growth.

And it is part of a team-wide year of transciency for [FoAM].
http://fo.am/macrotransiency-foam-bxl/

I'm looking forward to working with them again into 2017 ;)

best

Amanda


On Mar 18, 2016, at 12:02 PM, Marina Zurkow wrote:

> I co-led a series of workshops with geographer Valentine Cadieux in 2014 in Minneapolis, around the idea of eating the future.
> 
> We prototyped this together by serving millet tacos, then making big mac communion wafers (yes, the whole thing minus the wrapper put in a food processor, then dehydrated) and bagging wild mint...
> 
> pics here: http://o-matic.com/ssc/futTop.html