Collaborative Futures is a design project that connects students from the Glasgow School of Art with the greater community and industry to tackle societal future challenges. This year the project is in partnership with Glasgow City Council’s Centre for Civic Innovation. The hope is to collaboratively make solutions for the future that are more inclusive and citizen led.

This year’s topic is all about food, and specifically ‘Glasgow’s Food Futures: Local Ecosystems of Social Innovation in 2031.” The topic questions how the city might look, feel, and behave differently in 10 years’ time. Our research seeks to understand how place, neighbourhood, and inhabitants impact and influence food systems and vice versa. What will the future foodscapes of Glasgow look like: what are we eating, how are we forming communities/neighbourhoods, where does our food come from, and who or what is missing from the equation?

Our approach was to first understand the landscape of the Glasgow food system and so a comparative geographical study was done, followed by interviews with international and local experts as well as key actors in the community. Our findings were synthesized and framed into guiding principles for a preferable future– equity, pluralism, regenerative, intergenerational, hyperlocal. The second phase of designing a future world was done with a co-design methodology. Rather than designing for citizens, we asked they design with us by inviting our interviewees and others from the community and council to take an equal seat at the table and bring their own ideas about what the future could like when it informed by these inclusive guiding principles.

The resulting design workshop brought about a key development in our future vision. Abundance. How do we make the future one of equity and abundance with everyone getting what they need in a way that works for them.