The Brief: Design a product, service or system using food and farming to improve people’s health and well-being.
The Concept: I recognised that there was a gap in the market that could make unused land in urban spaces available to localise the production and distribution of healthy food.
The Solution: What We Sow is a hydroponic growing system using city rooftops to grow and donate fresh food for food banks.
Whilst researching into food sustainability in the UK, I discovered that 8.4 million British people are food insecure.
The global population is set to reach 9.8 billion by 2050 so this is a crucial time to address how we can support and increase the sustainability of our food systems.
I soon realised that by connecting two diverse communities, I could broaden the scope of people who could be positively affected.
As well as relieving city workers from workplace stress, I would also be addressing a large scale problem that many are not aware of.
I decided to create a brand concept book that would be distributed to the employees whose offices were part of What We Sow.
The book explains how the system works and informs them of all the benefits of working and volunteering with us.
Government funding would cover the set up of the hydroponic system. The framework offers a unique flexibility to create tailored systems for each individual rooftop.
Once the system is installed, we would provide training and education on how it works, asking employees to help harvest and package up the fresh produce.
Employees will be given delivery bikes to take the food to the food banks in need. Any surplus produce will be available to take home by the volunteers.
As the concept grows and more businesses get involved, we can start to educate people on the importance of urban farming and sustainability of our food systems.
Bringing consumers and growers closer together not only reduces the impact on the environment, but increases the availability of fresh and healthy produce while supporting and investing in the local community.
In addition, I created a brand concept video that would be presented to the businesses getting involved with What We Sow.
The minute-long video sums up the idea in a clear and concise way, and would hopefully convince these businesses to get involved.
DISCLAIMER: A few images above have been found online, because this was for my university project, I have utilised the online world to create a realistic vision for my concept.
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