Atlas of Weak Signals¶
Atlas of weak signals seminar: at the beginning of the week I had no idea what these days would have brought me.
During this week I started to navigate topics and areas of opportunity of design that I am interested in. Thanks to the card game and to the dialogue with other people, we explored every possible emerging scenario of any possible emerging future. Or at least this is how it felt to me.
But what is a weak signal? It is an emerging trend or topic that has a potential to become huge. And it can speculate any possible future.
We were asked to explore the cards, pick some random ones and then to pick a favorite one: very hard task considering all the interesting cards that we had. It felt impossible to me choosing just one field. Eventually, I went for the field of Design for Anthropocene and chose Climate Conscience. But also Locally Productive Globally Connected truly represents me and my interests, as Design for Social Innovation, Redesigning Habits, Circular Economy or Digital Carbon Footprint. And many other ones.
Okay, yes. I’m interested in many topic.
We started building our design space using the cards, some case studies and our free reasoning. My design space went through many developments and changes. From “how does what we eat affect the world” to “how to visualize Co2” and then “clay and local materials”. Eventually, what I understood is that the connection in between all of these design spaces is the concept of LOCAL. Eat local, speak local, buy local, learn local. Respect local. Be local. Connect local. Reuse local. From the clay that you use to do pottery to the vegetables that you cook for dinner. This is deeply related to my fight: food gentrification. I deeply believe that eating local is the only way to fight this phenomenom back.
Why?
To fight ecological crises, to support local producers, to reduce Co2 emissions. To be more in touch with what our land can offer us. To have a deeper experience in a place you go visit cause you truly connect with its native food. To avoid food dispossession in other parts of the world.
I live very close to el Mercat de la Boqueria and it’s shocking to me seeing tourists buying imported dragon fruits, ananas and avocados. Why don’t we give more value to local fruits and vegetables? And also to restaurants and shops who offer local commodities?
Also, something disturbing to me living in such a touristic area of Barcelona is the food waste that comes from restaurants and street food shops. Under the new bill passed by the Spanish government, restaurants and bars are soon gonna be obliged to offer free doggy bags to take home leftover food. Honestly, never saw that happening. How does Barcelona manage food waste? This is also thinking in local mindset.
I think we should put more attention in the whole process of food: where does it come from, how does it arrive to our home, and how easily it becomes waste.
I wrote down some experiments and tasks that I will try in the following days, that consider all of the three branches that I developed, in order to involve myself better in the process, to understand better and to keep developing.
