World Food Day: Food for Thought

School of Art, Design and Architecture exhibition addressing challenges around food, hunger and inclusivity, 20–27 October 2022

Food for Thought exhibition in Roland Levinsky Building

In this exhibition, six unique projects were brought together. Students from the School of Art, Design & Architecture created work around food, inclusivity, and sustainability. On display from 20–27 October 2022 in RLB Crosspoint, attendees could view the work and also bring non-perishable donations for Plymouth Food Bank containers, adjacent to the exhibition. Foods that could be donated included: cereals, tinned food (meat, fruit, vegetables, soup), UHT milk and long-life juice cartons, tea and coffee, biscuits, pasta sauces – in jars, jam/peanut butter and chocolate spreads, toiletries).

The Food for Thought exhibition marked World Food Day, originating from UN work and highlighting the UN Sustainable Goal pledge to achieve zero hunger by 2030. Food for Thought aimed to raise awareness of local food poverty, which affected 5 million of the UK’s population 2019–2020 (gov.uk, 2020).

Exhibition poster: Radhika Chintaluri
Exhibition set-up support: Lauren Lambert and Cerys O’Brien

Food for Thought exhibition poster: Radhika Chintaluri

Film

Project title: Sustainable Food: Plymouth
Students: Jake Willett, Archie Garrett, Ben Faulkner.
Discipline: BA Filmmaking 2nd year as part of the Professional Filmmaker Module’s focus on UN Sustainable Development Goals.

A documentary exploring different places around the city of Plymouth that are part of the Food for the Planet movement, to answer the question “what can we do differently with food to help the environment?” The film visits associates of Food Plymouth to find what they are doing to be more sustainable when it comes to food. This journey takes us from harbours, to markets, to community spaces, to see what we can do to reduce food waste, to better the environment, ourselves and our wallets.

3D Design

Project title: Tackling Holiday Hunger
Name of student: Sarah Boot
Discipline: BA 3D Design: Designer Maker + MA Design (UFO was a 3rd year project)

The project focused on community focused food trucks that would provide children with healthy cooking lessons from local restaurateurs, who in turn can utilise the vehicles for commercial use. The impact of which would lead to building a community that is supportive and nurturing.

Learn more about the Tackling Holiday Hunger project

Project title: The MUNCH Project
Name of student: Saw Kok Ian
Discipline: MA Design

The MUNCH Project expands our modern diet beyond the supermarket variety of 0.1% of edible species by encouraging the consumption edible invasive species as a form of sustainable food and environmental activism. MUNCH achieves this by proposing a system that educates, identify and consumes local invasive species by incorporating different communities – invasive species experts, food industry and local consumers. Rather than targeting consumers directly, MUNCH relies on the relationship and trust between food producers and consumer to introduce foreign food items as a new way of conscious sustainable food consumption.

Read the Project Journal

Architecture

Project title: Garden of Inclusivity
Students: Benjeman Booth, Finnley Chambers, Matthew Evans, Benjamin Harries, Ben Howley, Max Keevil, Lauren Lambert, Thomas Schofield
Discipline: Architecture, Yr 2

In response to the Diversity Business Incubator’s (DBI) site aspirations of inclusivity and sustainability, as a group, we proposed a design that redevelops the site to maximise the garden’s functionality through introducing growing, catering and dining facilities that bring the DBI community together. By creating a centralised, multifunctional dining area surrounded by a pergola, flanked by tiered seating, the act of eating food becomes almost performative allowing different ethnicities to gather and share their cuisines immersed in the sensory gardens in which produce grows. Our greenhouse design helps to make growing vegetables easy and efficient, with the goal of making the DBI more self-sufficient. We wanted the garden to grow more exotic produces like spices, peppers and chillis which make up the basis of meals from the variety of different ethnicities using the space.

Learn more about Garden of Inclusivity

Project title: Lattice
Students: Marks Aksjonovs, Myles Emmanuel, Oskar Gieleta-Kagon, Dylan Ivett, Samragya Katawal, Maksymilian Kucza, Edward Lemmon, Harvey Pond
Discipline: Architecture, Yr 2

In this project, we as a group wanted to create a space where people could gather, and celebrate with each other, through the sharing of food which grew around them. Along with this, an outdoor kitchen was created, as a perfect area to prepare the variety of foods which would grow on our site. The overall vision was created through careful planning and design choices, from the sociable formation of the benches to the sustainable material choices.

Learn more about Lattice