Last week my design studies group met up (17th February) to refine our thoughts and sort out the FINAL service we want to provide for our 'Enterprise' project. We started to talk about the ideas we had liked the sound of the previous week and narrow down the group favourites. Within half an hour our service was decided and we finally knew the service we wanted to provide not only post-consumers but the general public.
So the idea is based on people growing their own food - their own fruit and vegetables and greatly encouraging its continuation. However, we are also trying to get people who don't grow their own food some incentive to start and open their eyes to the benefits.
Imagine a 'Car Boot Sale' minus the household items we all want rid off and replace them with home grown produce - this can be from fruit and vegetables to game. We will provide the venue and the ability to sell on the extra food produce from your household and all the community has to do is pay a fee for a pitch each week. This will encourage people to grow their food and not worry about waste, as they will know that they can make some money from produce that they normally would throw away. This will keep people growing their own and not have to worry about food that they can't use.
We will also provide 'Starter Packs' that will contain seeds, instructions on growing food in your area, a bag of soil and a container, to get you started. It will even information about where you can grow your crop if you don't have a back garden e.g. urban dwellers. Everything you would need to get started is in this pack. Another way to get the urban environment greener and growing. There's simply no reason why people who live in busy cities can't grow their own food, just as much as someone who lives in the countryside. Urban vegetable patches are what we hope to achieve.
In a previous meeting we liked the idea of 'Recipe Swaps' and getting people within the community together. So we have decided that we are going to incorporate this into our service. People can bring their recipes along and swap produce with other sellers, so that they can potentially fulfil their ingredient list. The bartering and swapping will be down to the discretion of the people, to get themselves a good bargain. We don't want to put rules and regulations on this as we believe it will deter people and also take a bit of fun away from the haggling.
Overall this is our 'Service' so far and our next meeting will refine and consolidate these ideas further. We may also even have a brand/name by then that will get us recognised and help our service move further financially and globally. We want our trading service to be in multiple towns and cities, running weekly and bringing communities together.
