Be[e] the Creative Food of Social Innovation

Abstract

Three-fourths of the world’s flowering plants and about 35% of food crops depend on pollinators to reproduce: more than 3,500 species of native bees help humanity to increase farming yields. However, due to climate change and pesticides, possible extinction scenarios for these insects have been reported. How can design address this problem? What can design do for bees? A bachelor final research project (“There is no plan bee”)1 focuses on the city’s abandoned spaces and the actions of creative citizens. On the one hand, the possibility to reuse abandoned places practising sustainable solutions. On the other hand, the chance for citizens and cities to activate bottom-up design practices and social innovation, facilitating a kind of circular city. Civic participation extends to the making of new urban communities, through simple self-produced installations, aiming to cultivate new visions and to influence creative food cycles. The paper aims to new models of knowledge production, addressing social, environmental and economic issues linked with food culture. It also deals with designing for common goods as a need for our next future.