Food Design Labs

Place-based learning for food, community and local change

Food Design Labs are place-based learning experiences for people working with food, land, communities and the future of their places. They sit within Living Earth College’s approach to andragogical education and action learning, where adults bring their own experience, questions and knowledge into the learning process, and where learning happens through direct engagement with the world rather than being separated from it.

A Lab might take place on a farm, in a community garden, around a seed library, at a local food enterprise, around a shared table, or alongside the people and organisations already working to create change. We observe a place, listen to its stories, explore its food cultures and local economies, develop practical skills, and work together on real questions and possibilities.

The focus is food as a living social and civic practice: the relationships between food, people, land, culture, skills, livelihoods and community life.

Participants develop deeper co-design knowledge by working with the complexity of a real place and learning how to move from observation and conversation into ideas, prototypes and practical action. This might mean imagining a community food project, developing a seed library, exploring social farming, strengthening a local food economy, or finding new ways for people to work together.

The Labs are also a way of taking this learning into policy and public life. Living Earth College can work with councils, municipalities, community organisations and policy groups to use place-based action learning as a form of inquiry and co-design, bringing lived experience, practical knowledge and local capability into the design of new initiatives and policies.

Food Design Labs can be experienced independently, incorporated into Living Earth College courses, or developed as bespoke learning and co-design processes with organisations and communities.

Our next international Lab is Liguria, Italy — 27–31 January 2027. Further Labs will be offered in Tasmania and other places.

Food. People. Place. Skills. Community. Possibility.