Exploring the role of futures design and storytelling in reimagining our relationship with nature post COVID-19.
Climate change in Scotland still feels intangible but we are beginning to see glimpses of the future. This image of a flooded underpass outside Buchanan Bus Station could become a lot more common. In an imagined future, Glasgow turned Hydro-City, people have adapted to local climate change by valuing local food production and nature based solutions to flooding.
In a future Glasgow a resident of Cowcaddens grows food on their balcony. The balcony is only a tiny part of a distributed network of local food production that makes use of biosensors to monitor the state of the city’s produce. Even in a future adapting to food insecurity, sprouts are still divisive vegetables.
Citizen science has become an important part of caring for the local environment. In this image a resident of Garnethill is helping to monitor the health of their local SUDS* pond in a public bio-hub. After a trend of people submitting buckfast as a pond sample a data cleaning AI was installed in the sample reader. *Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems
Visit to the Scottish Storytelling Center. Traditional storytelling techniques create an immersive experience using only words and body language. Humans have used storytelling for thousands of years to communicate knowledge and values. There is evidence to suggest that character driven stories cause oxytocin synthesis in the brain, evoking empathy which can have a powerful effect on people's beliefs and behaviours.
Field work at Seven Lochs, taking part in the workshop, ‘Introduction to freshwater: their habitats and how they can be monitored’. Discovering the importance of insects in our ecosystem and how citizens can take monitoring their environment into their own hands.
Repair Cafe Glasgow is one of a network of organisations supporting the international Repair Movement. Increasingly citizens want the right to fix their products for both economical and environmental reasons. In a future Glasgow responding to the planet’s diminishing resources, the skills required to fix things will be valued more.