FarmLab

About This Project

A few years ago we farmed on Farmstart, an incubator farm. We grew and sold organic vegetables to Unicorn and weeds, like Fat hen, to Aumbry in Prestwich. Farming is hard work, but we loved being in the countryside, recycling, weeding and composting, using simple tools to grow food without wifi or electricity. Being reliant on the weather, is joyful: welcoming the rain, getting muddy, nurturing a cup of tea. And, when things went wrong, we tried again, learned from failure.

We designed FarmLab, a pop up urban farm to bring that experience to the city. We ran a FarmHack bringing farmers, scientists, engineers and designers together to co-design and prototype solutions to help solve farming problems. We created a pop up mushroom farm in a container, growing mushrooms from waste coffee grounds and hosted pop up #DIYmushrooms growing events and Mushroom Hacks to improve the process by bringing mushroom farmers, scientists, engineers and designers together. We hope that creating growing spaces in cities and a connection to the food we eat whilst tempering our impact on the environment could bring city dwellers joy, in the same way, it brought us joy in the countryside. And, when things don’t work, we come together to solve our problems.