01. GM Weeknotes –23rd July 21📅

5 min readJul 30, 2021

Hello, Welcome! 👋

This is my first week of “weeknotes”. I’ve been reading quite a few different ones each week and have been enjoying hearing from projects around the UK and world.

This summer I am working in my first “proper” service design job in between 3rd and 4th year of my university course, as an Intern for the CCI in Glasgow. I wanted to find a way to be more reflective on the 12 weeks and also my own practice. I’ve been doing lots of reflecting behind the scenes, but feel weeknotes is a great way to talk about some of my project work and my own reflections more publicly each week. I am already 6 weeks into this internship so my weeknotes are a few weeks into my project.

I’m not the best writer, blogger or reflector so this is a new way of working and a new skill I am trying to develop, I’m excited to see how it goes, how it feels and what others think (so if you do come across my weeknotes, feel free to comment!).

I also have a blog on my portfolio site, where I have started to capture thoughts around more specific topics — but my weeknotes will always be published here. Would also welcome feedback/thoughts/insights on whether having a portfolio blog is useful or if I should just have it all in Medium… (?)

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Food Project 🍎

Quick Context 📌

My project started about 6 weeks ago (3 weeks into my internship role). I was initially tasked with finding a project of interest from an open brief, within the scope of storytelling, capacity building in the community and data. It also needed to fit into the ongoing objectives of the CCI.

My research into the ongoing work, objectives & previous interests led me towards Food Stories and Food Connections within the community. Food is an important theme of design for me; particularly looking at how food can expose and solve social problems. Anyone who is interested in this way of thinking about food should check out Sitopia & Hungry City by Carolyn Steel.

Lots of Research 📋

There’s been a lot of research on this project; both looking at the ongoing projects, the community base and location and then wider research of what is going on in the food sphere. I’ve taken a lot of information from ongoing work like the Glasgow City Food plan (launched a few weeks ago), the Glasgow City Food Growing plan, GCFN Food and Climate Action project and other city initiatives. Using this information to align our project objectives so that it is useful for the city.

As part of my research this week I have started a directory of reports in Miro; pulling out key information from reports like the one below (Vocal for Local — Landworkers Alliance). The directory will be a source of information about what is going on in food both in Glasgow and beyond, but also what people are writing about. I am hoping this directory will be a place to refer back to when thinking about objectives and future projects.

This has been a useful task this week, one that I hope I can find to do as an ongoing task. For me this feels like a really good resource to have and well worth the time of capturing this information.

Blue Background Miro Board with Pink Post-it notes, in columns

Another part of my research this week has been updating my mapping — as I discover someone new, or a new project focused on food in Glasgow, I have been adding it to a map and showing connections / interests. I have had a number of a meetings with people around the city who are working in some form of food related project from Child Healthy Weight to Greenspace Mapping.

A pack of orange post-it notes sits on topic of graph paper. Block capital handwriting says “Are we obsessed with mapping things?”

Although this project set out initially around Food Stories and Food Communities, time constraints of this being a holiday project have led to a lot more time researching — which I am enjoying and feel is really valuable.

I have noticed through doing this, a lot of overlapping work and projects in Glasgow around Food. I am currently thinking about ways in which there could be more networking / umbrella view of all of this work.

Cultural Probes

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about different ways to gather food stories in the community we are working with. Culture Probes or spontaneous interventions are of real interest to me within my practice. I love the work of Candy Chang. They are not something I have done before but I have been doing lots of research on different projects that have used these.

An open A4 Moleskin sketchbook showing a page with a sketch simple of two postcards (back and front) the front reads “3 prompts”. Below are two stuck in images of different cultural probes found on pinterest, the title reads “Inspiring Information”

I found a great website a few months ago.

So this week I have been developing this concept / idea further. Thinking about ways to use cultural probes to gather food stories around the barriers to food. Potentially using a postcard format… to be continued!

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Other Projects 💻

I am working on a few other projects with my team, supporting the Neighbourhood designers at the CCI. I can’t talk about a lot of the ongoing work, but again this has been a lot of researching and understanding communities.

I am part of the Bloomberg Bid Team for Glasgow, we are coming up for the end of the first sprint, which has been an exciting and challenging project to be a part of within this internship. This week I have been pulling together a data wall with all the research primary and secondary that we gathered.

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New this week 🤓

Current Read:

Headspace by Dr Paul Keedwell

Loving this new book I am reading, not necessarily design related but it’s focus on how people feel, live and experience the urban environment is very fitting with social design.

A left-hand with a brown leather watch strap holds a book, Headspace The Psychology of City Living, the book is bright blue with a yellow illustration. The illustration is a head with a city coming out of the top. The hand holds the book up against the backdrop of a lawn and pavement.