Setting the table
Master thesis
Submitted version
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Date
2022-06Metadata
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- Design [217]
Description
This project is about food, health and culture. Today we see that socioeconomic status is part of what affects your health and the length of your life. At the same time food is currently threatening planet health. This is closely connected with what and how we eat. Our goal has been to make healthy and sustainable food more available to all.
Through exploration of underlying structures we saw that much of the responsibility for solving many today’s problems related to food lies with the government. In several agreements and reports they pledge to make healthy and sustainable food more accessible for everyone.Therefore it is natural that the government should take a more active, collaborative, and facilitating role.
We propose three interlinked interventions of design meant to inform and inspire the government to support a shift from individual to collective food cultures. The proposal offers a mission-oriented way of thinking that builds on the participation of citizens.
The first intervention is a new institution, Mathuset, that facilitates healthy and sustainable food being available to everyone. It consists of public spaces in communities that provide an arena where one can learn about, eat, and explore food through practice, discussion, and collaboration.
The next intervention is policy recommendations to make change possible on a large scale. As this is a huge and ambitious proposal it needs to be explored and developed further. Therefore new policies should be prototyped through pilots of Mathus that would further inform and explore what these policies could look like and how a Mathus could be, what it does, and what to avoid.
The third intervention is a national vision for regenerative and equitable food cultures. Mathuset would be more reachable through using this vision as a compass. By providing people a direction it is easier to inspire engagement and get people on board. This promotes citizen-friendly food cultures that can have ripple effects in society.
This project will supply the government with a foundation for future work towards a systemic shift in our food system. In addition we hope this project will raise engagement and function as