Project Overview

TURF is a kit of parts that encourages each of us to rethink how we put the limited space in urban areas to better use, and lead healthier and more active lives. TURF mobilises communities around the benefits of growing and sharing basic produce locally through a brand identity, sustainable growers’ kit, app and manifesto.

Organisation

PriestmanGoode

 

Team

Amalie-Borg Hansen
Marina Mellado
Mabel Dilliway
Guy Genney
Kirsty Dias

Project Brief

TURF aims to empower a movement. Each part of the toolkit is designed to help re-establish the lost connection between the production and consumption of food and help create strong local communities.

Designed under a brief of design activism, the kit includes the manifesto to set-out the benefits of growing food locally in a clear, motivating way; an adaptable brand identity system that can be localised; an app that connects communities and ensures information is available 24/7 and a sustainable growers’ kit that helps people get started – even if their only available space is a window ledge.

Project Innovation/Need

The pandemic highlighted the need to rethink our food networks and decrease our reliance on global supply chains. We saw supermarket shelves stripped of food, and food banks facing vast increases in demand. We understood that there was a need and a desire to look for more local solutions. As people spent more time at home, we also observed a desire to go back to basics. We saw people wanting to improve the connection between what they were eating and where this food came from. We also saw a gap in the market for education. We wanted to provide a helpful resource that would enable people to get started, whether they have just a windowsill, an allotment or a garden. TURF is about connecting growers and facilitating knowledge sharing.

By growing our own food and sharing surplus with our immediate neighbours and local businesses, we believe that people can be united behind a basic human need.

Design Challenge

Community projects achieve success through a self-led and democratic approach, therefore TURF needed to be easily understood and provide resources that local groups can adopt and personalise without ever feeling that they’re following a rulebook. The scale can adapt from a single home-based grower to a large community growing surplus produce leading to commercial opportunities that fund that community’s wider needs.

The TURF brand identity system is bold and confident. But also, in the spirit of a movement, easily implemented and applied in a variety of settings. The simple colour palette has roots in nature, with a green that evokes growing and the red that shows the brand’s more rebellious side. The mark or logo comprises a square within a circle – the circle representing community and the square representing the patch where the person grows their produce. The team has explored the possibility of personalising the logo, so that produce from a borough or neighbourhood could be identified. Whilst brands serve to provide definition, our goal is to provide guidelines, recognising that communities are diverse and self-governing and may want to adapt the brand to meet their own specific needs.

For first time growers, knowing where to start can be challenging. A useful starter questionnaire on the TURF app enables individuals to explore where they might want to start, based on what they want to grow, their experience and what space they have available. The app also features top tips and acts as a knowledge bank. The idea is for the app to also allow people to exchange surplus produce with other households or small businesses. One of the main advantages of the app is that information is available 24/7 without the need for staffing or printed materials.

Future Impact

TURF addresses a real and relatable need. The cost of living crisis, so soon after the pandemic highlights the fragility of global supply chains. The world’s population will consume more food over the next 50 years than in the last 10,000 years combined. The UN has predicted there are only 60 harvests left until global soils become barren. As a further fact, 35% of all food produced is lost or wasted. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/soil-lifespans

To help first-time growers we have developed kits made of recycled, compostable materials. Each kit contains pots, seed bombs and seed markers. All the grower needs are soil and water to get started. No outer packaging is required when posting the kits and at the end of their useful life the materials ensure that the product is circular, leaving no legacy of waste.

Increasingly, communities will look towards self-initiated projects to regulate and sustain themselves, reflecting a frustration and lack of faith in central systems. TURF provides the framework needed for a community to become self-reliant for certain types of produce.

The manifesto encourages the community to plan and eat according to the seasons and question the wasteful transportation of goods across the world and realise they have a part to play. Starting small and in an accessible manner, with a larger mission and incentive behind it, TURF has the potential to inspire, motivate and educate people by giving them the tools to create a healthier and more sustainable future.