Exhibition sustainable food system

The environmentally friendly week or "the green week" is the annual event Naturskyddsföreningen (Society for Swedish nature conservation) organizes. This year's topic was; Mat för ett bättre klimat or something like; CHANGE FOOD INSTEAD OF CLIMATE

The Uppsala division could contribute with;

• exhibition in the main library
• interview in the local radio Tuesday morning
• local producers and the fair trade shop met people in the exhibition in tuesday
• posters/brochures in and outside supermarkets (5), coffee shop (4), fair trade shop (1) and a book store (1)
• lecture from professor Charlotte Lagerberg Fogelberg from CUL, Center for sustainable agriculture, and a local organic producer and speaker Kjell Sjelin, Kjell & Ylva Sjelin Lantbruk

And some activities outside the exhibition;

• discussion evening
• guided tour in the supermarket, guided from the staff
• food party; exchange of food, recipes and thoughts

From the ceiling, we hung milk package (the local produced brand); one liter of package was equal to one kilo of a carbon dioxide equivalent.




The beef had then 18 packages when the methane was recalculated to carbon dioxide, compared to beans 0,2 packages or 0,2 kilo of carbon dioxide. Every number was to one kilo of the product.


A map to the local milk producers and some information about how and where to buy local produced food in Uppsala.








A cubic meter of water (1000 liter), inside the wood, can only give 1 liter milk or 64,5 gram of beef.



Some brochures; people could read at the table or take with them.



A corner with books and recipes.
















Here is a "wall" (a cube in the middle of the room) where the visitors could write their own thoughts about the environmentally friendly food;"share your own Eco-friendly food tips", they could also put their own recipes up and evaluate the exhibition.


My work in this week was to hold the activities outside the exhibition and to have the interview in the radio. I didn't plan for the exhibition because I live in a city 500 km away. So I planned for the activities, had a collaboration with Studiefrämjandet (The Study Promotion Association), booked rooms, talked to the staff in the supermarket and printed papers and posters. But then on Wednesday when no one had signed up for the activities, I went to put posters all over the city. The next day I signed the papers for my apartment to be sold 300 km away, but in Friday when I came back and still no one on my list, I re-arrange the exhibition. The pictures showed and the text was the result. In Saturday with only 12 people coming to the lectures, I gave up. A "green week" about food without food did not work!

This is not the first time we see that information-about-things is not enough. People will not just show up because of some posters. Or people will not change behavior just because of an exhibition.




Last picture; I desperate try to get more people into the exhibition; "you can still eat some meat, come inside and have a look how"(down). The upper sign is the title of Uppsala's exhibithion "Food- hero for nature or a climate villain" (Swedish: Mat- naturhjälte eller klimatbov. Is not as fun in English).