Citizen way: Co-created citizen science meets convivial food design

Abstract

This research approaches co-created citizen science from an interdisciplinary design perspective and is aligned with ideals of democratic and participatory co-creation of knowledge, its dissemination and implementation. We propose a new theoretical and practical design framework to be added to citizen science: convivial food system design. Convivial food system design is a new relational and tactical way to approach the development of a regenerative food system. Citizen science approaches can also benefit convivial food system design through activating communities of practice to share their insights and actively participate in co-food systems design processes. The integration of convivial food systems design and citizen science offers a deep, holistic and radical relation between amateur, civic and academic (scientific) knowledge in the production of alternatives to industrial food systems. This article shows the possibilities and potentials of this new conceptual integration through a theoretical framework and case study ‘experiment’ – the Huon Valley Food Hub project, Tasmania, Australia.