This project is a further evolution inspired by the work undertaken for Glasgow’s Food Future as developed through pedagogical practice and theory while teaching. The work was developed by Alexander Stewart and myself as a collaboration between our teaching practices.

As educators of young designers we see year after year a desire within the discipline to design within the public realm, and in particular to do something of consequence in a challenging social space. As well intentioned as this may be, designers are not all powerful and certainly not all knowing.

This method was developed to allow a broad spectrum of people to engage in civic co-design and co-define by using making for surfacing tacit and latent knowledge and creating collaborative conversations about the complex intersections of the food system and the many ways it is felt and experiences. The table becomes a data mapping landscape allowing participants to co-define and synthesise cluster narratives that are both common and conflicting. It is often the moments of tension that show the greatest opportunity for intervention.

This method is now being implemented in a new project developing community co-designed markets in Glasgow funded by UKRI. https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/community-food-cocreated-markets/about/