Workshop: Growing and provisioning food in localities under the new unsure future 2.0

This event and workshop is a cross-over between philosophy, livelihoods, and farming.

Time: May 12, 2026, at 15:00 – 17:30 
Place: Viikki Think Company venue (Latokartanonkaari 3) + after-chill at CoolHead Brew (Koetilantie 1) 
For whom: Students (and others) interested in food security, community building and personal agency in an unsure future  

This workshop explores new ways of thinking and doing food procurement, growing and cultivation in localities, establishing livelihoods with agency and community, and sparking entrepreneurship supporting resilient food systems and meaningful living and working in an uncertain future.  

 

The event continues from our last workshop. The programme builds further on the themes, discussions, and ideas that emerged previously, as well as present a few new things happening in Viikki and the Uusimaa region. 
Programme

Inspirational presentations 

  • Welcome and goals of the workshop by Laura Forsman, Viikki Food Design Factory lead.
  • Community-based food sovereignty work in an indigenous community in Ecuador by Riina Bhatia, a doctoral researcher at UH on post-growth sustainability transformation, and researcher at VTT.
  • Oma Maa, a food co-operative based on community-supported agriculture, by Ruby van der Wekken, a producing member of Oma Maa, who has been involved in several community-based grassroots innovations.  

  • The , by Wilhelmina Mäntylä and Tiia Pelkonen

  • CIRCULANDIA project and opportunities in local food hub activities in Viikki, by Laura Forsman 

  

Co-creation of concepts and plans 

  • Point-of-departure: pick up where you left off last time or take a new idea
  • Goal: create an activity and a Way of Working that you could do (in Viikki) together on an on-going basis related to growing/cultivating food, distributing food, upcycling nutrients from household food waste (e.g. composting) etc.
  • Share ideas and build on them
  • Establish next steps and way of organizing  
     

We invite all people interested in the topics to join the workshop and look forward to continuing the conversation and ideation together with new participants as well as people from the first session. 

 
Organizers

This workshop is organized by Viikki Food Design Factory, Professor Michiru Nagatsu & PhD researcher Riina Bhatia, and supported by the Viikki Innovation Campus project (co-funded by the City of Helsinki) and the Food SystemiCity programme (co-funded by the European Union) and the CIRCULANDIA EU Horizon project.