Seeding ideas in the power bill?

One of the goals of the DoTT07 Festival is to:

re-frame food systems as design opportunities, and to consider what design steps we might take to make it easier for city-dwellers to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

I’ve written before about the Rethinking School Lunch initiative.  This American project aims to make food production an integral part of the school curriculum and activities,  At DoTT07 a project on a much wider scale is showcased: Middlesborough’s Urban Farming poject.

Up to a quarter of the ecological footprint of towns and cities is made up of the way food is grown, distributed, prepared, eaten – and chucked away.  What practical design steps might change that?

The Middlesborough project involved more than 15 schools, many other groups, and more than 1000 “newurban farmers”.  Public parks, areas of schools and shopping malls, otherwise disused areas areas – all provided areas of “edible landscape”.   This has raised crops and raised awareness.   Ongoing work involves mapping further areas, deploying more planters around the city, and designing “kitchen playgrounds”.

I like the notion of receiving a packet of seeds with my electricity bill.