Food futures is a scenario building experiment for LateLab Open Sauces at the Edinburgh Science festival in April 2014. We use futures techniques to look at how the relationship between food, wellness and the environment might evolve in the future.

Photo by Chris Scott

We began by defining the context for LateLab Open Sauces:

• The region is Scotland/North-western Europe.
• The focus is on the relationship of food, wellness and the environment (including growing, producing, distributing, consuming, tasting and disposing of food).
• The context is a science festival, public understanding of science, looking at food systems and cycles, as well as infrastructure.
• The timescale is 0-60 years in the future.

We looked at a range of change drivers or food horizons:

• categorised the drivers into STEEP (social, technological, environmental, economic and political) categories
• clustered the drivers thematically into “industrial, intensive and global”, “small, slow and local” and “open, transformative and translocal”
• analysed the three clusters based on causal layered analysis

Based on the drivers and CLA derived myths we created four food scenarios (using 'four generic futures' method of the Manoa School). For each scenario we designed a 'toast' or a short speech that would introduce each dish in the language of the scenario.

• Continue
• Collapse
• Discipline
• Transform

The four scenarios were translated into a series of dishes, combined according to the panarchy model into the flow for the latelab menu.

The event was curated by Amanda McDonald Crowley. Concept and sound design by Nik Gaffney and Maja Kuzmanovic of FoAM. Scenario design by FoAM (Nik Gaffney, Maja Kuzmanovic, Michka Melo and Rasa Alksnyte). Menu design by FoAM and Ginny Hunter of Blue Sky Catering, produced by Mark Daniels and Roween Suess of New Media Scotland. Chris Scott was the photographer. A team of volunteers from the Edinburgh science festival were our gracious table hosts and waiters.

Photos by FoAM and Chris Scott