#grocad

Merwad Abdallah investigates grOCAD’s avocado-based dyes

Andre Baynes presents on ‘Design Education for Food Sovereignty’

grOCAD leaders Alyssa Haggerstrom and Terry Anastasiadis demonstrate natural dyes from their workshop hosted by grOCAD at Fibre Studios. Ingredients include avocado pit and onion skin!

Strategic Foresight and Innovation students lead a workshop on zero waste at OCAD U.

The Sustainability Forum created an opportunity for dialoguing across disciplines. OCAD U community members have requested opportunities to collectively dream and troubleshoot on sustainability and environmental justice at OCAD U and beyond. This includes requests for social space and dialogue, for pause and respite, for showcasing research, for collaboration, and for learning about relevant OCAD U processes and initiatives.

The Forum was physically interwoven within the Festival of the Body, co-curated by Wrik Mead and Natalie Waldburger. After sharing a lunch catered by NishDish, faculty, staff, and students participated in Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, workshopped thesis projects, and learned of sustainability-related research and programming occurring here at OCAD U.

Participants described the Forum as a way to encounter ideas and people whom might not have otherwise met, where seemingly disparate ideas were woven together to make sense of a systems-approach to sustainability and environmental justice.  With about twenty Forum participants from across OCAD U and from our external community, students were especially invited to explore their ideas in a public yet intimate space that facilitated cross-pollination. Presentation topics included: Design education for food sovereignty, curatorial practices in relationship to plants, biological materials for furniture, food security & spatial usage, and waste management.

The Forum concluded with tangible ways to apply ideas and get involved. Strategic Foresight and Innovation graduate students led a design-thinking workshop on waste management at OCAD U. The workshop invited participants to troubleshoot the various intertwining systems involved for the purchase, use, and disposal/recovery of materials at OCAD U. Student Union opened discussion to determine pathways towards accessing kitchen space for students at the University. And to wrap up the Forum, the grOCAD student group showcased the fruits of their labour from their Natural Dyes Workshop, which took place concurrently in Fibre Studios. grOCAD incorporated food materials from Hot Lunch for making the dyes, beautifully demonstrating the multiple benefits of taking a lifecycle approach to materials and resources.

The Forum brought together the many stories of sustainability at OCAD U!

Special thanks to our presenters: Andre Baynes Priyasha Singh Erica Cristobal SFI Consulting Team: Merwad Abdallah, Lindsay Clarke, Lesley Foulds, Chris Leveille grOCAD: Alyssa Haggstrom, Terry Anastasiadis

Tom Doughty is an OCADu student currently pursuing a BDes in Industrial Design. His interests include craft and fabrication as well as the teaching of historical trades. Tom has been involved in grOCAD for a couple of years and was recently a participating artist at the Reconstructing Resillience Symposium and Exhibition: an event that gathered researchers, artists, educators, students and community members in imaging and bridging all areas of sustainability.

Moss Installation by grOCAD (Tom Doughty, Alyssa Haggstrom, Hendrink Dannys, Heather Evelyn, Laura Headley, Emily Rourke) at Reconstructing Resillience. Image courtesy of Naomi Dodds, 2016.

SITE-SPECIFIC: What does sustainability and resilience mean to you?

TOM DOUGHTY: There's a philosopher not many people know of, Ivan Illich, who has developed one of the simplest and most profound theories on sustainability in my books. He talks about conviviality: whether a 'tool' is shaped by its user, and reflects their intentions, or whether the tool shapes the user, and produces a series of unintended consequences. By tools he means anything artificial that humans make to shape the world, from hammers to complex institutions and financial systems. I think a major part of the challenge that contemporary societies face is the complex web of unintended, and in some cases, unknowable consequences our tools produce, with simple decisions like choosing what to eat rippling outwards in many food and non-food-related domains to impact people and environments far beyond our immediate experience. Giving people agency over some of the tools that we have to rely on (food systems, knowledge distribution, housing etc.) helps to increase the knowability of the consequences our decisions have, and, hopefully, thereby encourage better ones. A convivial society, one where people have lots of agency and are operating at a local, low-energy, level, is hopefully one that is sustainable, resilient and also joyous and satisfying.

S: In what ways does your own creative practice incorporate sustainability?

D: Using found and upcycled materials has always been of great interest to me - the alchemy of transforming materials through many lives is fascinating. A lot of the tools I've made started off as car parts and machine components, and end up being chisels or crooked knives, which my friend Dave Fry might use to carve a spoon out of firewood.

S: What is grOCAD? How can students get involved?

D: Laura Headley, Ben Verdicchio, Marta Chudolinska and some others started grOCAD back in 2012. It was inspired by the WindowFarms of Britta Riley in Brooklyn, who was (and is) building modular systems that grow food for the vertically-housed. We all thought it would be great to try it out in the sterile interiors of OCAD, to see if we could bring some greenery, life and maybe fresh herbs to students, and since then we've been learning more about hydro and aquaponics, aquaculture, food security and bio-art. I should mention that Laura is a graphic designer, Ben was a sculptor, and Marta's the librarian in charge of the Learning Zone - which is to say that there's room for all disciplines in grOCAD, and its always been a strength, bringing different skill-sets to bear on the projects. We try to put out a newsletter (sign up through a note to [email protected]), and post about the projects we're working on through our Facebook group. Currently, there is a workshop at Xpace on the 30th of January, and a community garden in the spring with St. George the Martyr church. We love to facilitate and support new ideas, too, and can help students make their sustainable projects happen.

A grOCAD meeting: playing with different kinds of organic fibres to use in a concrete mix. Image courtesy of Tom Doughty.

S: Do you have any advice on how to keep sustainable habits in the city?

D: I'd love some! I always struggle with the pace of life in the city, and the endless competing demands on time can lead to all kinds of bad behaviour, for example, leaving food to go spoil in the fridge, endless paper coffee cups, letting social bonds fray. That last one seems to be important, though. Having a strong connection to friends and community, sharing meals and cooking and buying food together has always been the best way to use food efficiently and foster good mental health. Working for and with others, sharing resources, is pretty key to resilient communities, and has given me some perspective on what kind of things are essential to some kind of good life.

S: What is the role of creativity in advancing equity?