Becoming Growers : How might we empower novice gardeners to grow food?

Abstract: Our societies are in desperate need of food production models which decrease c02 emissions and increase local resilience and ecological health. The overarching aim of this project is to increase small-scale local food production while also increasing the life quality of both ecosystems and humans. To reach this aim I have designed for behavioural change by co-creating with a community to form beliefs and rituals with respect to cultural tradition and local ecological circumstances, this project thereby lives in the intersection between life-centred design and social design. The focus of this project is to propose how novices could be empowered to grow food and to simplify the process of learning how to do so. Today most of us lack both knowledge and experience if we’d like to grow food, the typical contemporary lifestyle with busy schedules and travels don’t match well with vegetable gardening, there is a lack of both time and community. The final proposal is a service for finding others to learn with/from or for exchanging mutual favours, focused on vegetable gardening. It Increases connections between local people and help growers help each other. Its 3 functions are: Learn together: Simplify findings likeminded people to learn together with & offer an established and free structure on learning how to grow food. Mutual favours made easy: Match people with specific practical needs to enable more people to grow food, find a Vacation Watering Companion for example. Unlock & share local human knowledge: Format for adding, rating & describing how specific seeds/plants/methods have worked out in local conditions. Create a reliable database of information about how local ecological growing might be optimised and developed. . Instead of focusing on innovation of something new, this project focuses on integration of the existing. The Solution is built upon pre existing support structures but utilises and applies its strengths in new contexts.