A research-based workshop series, Blackburn Urban Food Futures, was delivered by experts in urban agriculture from the University of Salford, with support from the National Festival of Making and The Making Rooms.
The collaborative and informal workshops gave insights into growing food in urban spaces, cultivating local food systems and imagining what, as a community of local organisations and residents, we could create for Blackburn’s future.
During the sessions, participants built their own self-watering windowsill growing system developed by The Making Rooms, before being taken on a journey to discuss, sketch and design a food system for Blackburn. The final design took the form of a tree-like structure; the system took inspiration from vertical farming, and included funnels to collect rainwater into a storage butt.
Over the festival weekend, festival visitors came together to build the modular system, adding their own decoration and planting it with salads and crops selected by the original participants for a ‘dream feast’.
About Blackburn Urban Food Futures
Blackburn Urban Food Futures was a research project in partnership with the University of Salford, and an extension of the Think it – Make it – Grow it project run by the University of Salford.
The workshops were led by Dr. Andy Jenkins and Dr. Laura Coucill from the University of Salford, who are experts in urban agriculture and architecture.
As part of this process, participants engaged with architecture students from the University of Salford and contributed to their design projects, which focus on the development of a hypothetical urban food resource centre as part of the regeneration of Blackburn city centre.
Photography by Fiona Finchett and Robin Zahler.