What Design Can Do: Embracing Traditions for a Sustainable Future

UnBox Cultural Futures Society and Quicksand Design Studio are country partners for What Design Can Do’s Make it Circular Challenge. Co-founder and managing partner Ayush Chauhan shares an Indian perspective on circular economies.

edible archives cuisine-agnostic menu shines a spotlight on local ingredients

Traditionally, India has always been circular in thought and design, from our understanding of ecosystems, waste management, rainwater harvesting to textiles, built environments, farming practises. We ate the last morsel of food, and waste was minimal, if any. Many Indian homes didn’t (and don’t) have a garbage bin. Households simply didn’t believe in the concept of ‘waste’—making sure to utilise everything. 

Leftover vegetables often became mixed vegetable dishes like chorchori, the Bengali delicacy. At the end of the week, leftover rice was fermented and vegetable peels became condiments. An understanding of what was being consumed allowed households to make informed and creative decisions that reduced wastage significantly. Home composting, an indigenous knowledge system passed on through generations, recovered and repurposed nutrients, allowing for a circular model to come into effect. 

Despite these historically successful practices, the Food and Agricultural Organisation estimated that 40 percent of the food produced in India is wasted every year, even before it reaches the consumer, due to fragmented food systems and inefficient supply chains. Inside the home, about 50 kgs of food per person is thrown away annually. To add to this, inefficient supply chains, lack of innovative farming options, increasing disconnect between urban consumers and food, and a shift in market practices such as the increase of e-commerce has led to a culture of bulk-buying, and wastage. 

Unfortunately, there are limited efforts to alter existing practices contributing to such massive waste generation. There is an opportunity to educate consumers to manage their food waste in sustainable ways, to implement urban agricultural practices, or introduce better storage facilities, all of which could reduce excessive food transportation, and subsequently decrease food waste and food loss in India. 

The result of these lack of efforts is a fragmented landscape, characterised by a lack of cohesive understanding and inadequate policy interventions to inform the varied interpretations of circularity.

Moving back towards a circular economy 

We now need to return from the linear model of make, take and waste, and meaningfully reincorporate circular design into how we eliminate waste, recirculate products and regenerate nature, instead of depleting biodiversity and resources, especially in an environment of rapid urbanisation, industrialisation and population growth. Our focus needs to shift to a holistic model that encompasses production, usage and disposal. 

For our society to become fully circular again, we need to change the way we design: from quick fixes to long-term solutions, from exploiting nature to collaborating with nature, from creating new materials to using what we already have.  

What design can do  

If we look at food, agriculture and value chains through the local lens, we see a lot of existing issues, as well as opportunities for design to make a meaningful difference. 

An example of sustainable food design is the Goa-based Edible Archives, an ingredient-driven and cuisine agnostic restaurant helmed by founder-chef Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar and partner Shalini Krishan. Edible Archives shines a spotlight on traditional ingredients, many of which are fast disappearing, that they either grow themselves, or source directly from farmers and local vendors, and limit waste as much as possible throughout the value chain.

Edible Archives began as a project at the Kochi Muziris Biennale where the focus was on the diversity of India’s rich indigenous rice heritage. In its current manifestation, Edible Archives shows how it is possible for a restaurant to be a catalyst for sustainability, environmental issues, and the preservation of local food traditions. 

Circular design is not new in India—as a country we are known for our frugal innovations. We need to collectively think about the future and in this context, circularity is an urgent call to action. When it comes to the food value chain, we need to identify how design can make a difference; for example, how can design introduce agricultural practices into urban spaces? How can design educate consumers to be more mindful of their food waste and where their food comes from? How can design encourage government policy to look at accessible interventions and schemes for people on the ground?

Similarly, when we also look at textiles, or built environments, the challenge that presents itself before us is to proactively think about the impact of design in our everyday lives. We need to identify the opportunities for thoughtful design and ultimately tackle some of the existing issues of waste and unsustainable practices. How can we create products that can be reused, or regenerated? 

Do you have a bold climate solution using circular design? 

The Make it Circular Challenge shows how it is possible to use creative design practices to rethink our current problems, and address the most pressing needs in order to create a more equitable future for all. 

Our partnership with What Design Can Do will bring to designers and creative entrepreneurs an opportunity to drive meaningful change by submitting their radical climate solutions using actionable circular design principles.  A circular society takes the circular economy one step further and considers the social and ethical dimensions of how people live their lives, from sun-up to sun-down.

We encourage designers and creators to dig deeper into local perspectives around circularity, and highlight specific challenges and key opportunities facing this region, and submit their design-driven innovations and projects across themes: what we eat, what we wear, what we buy, how we package and how we build. Winning proposals will be made into reality with an impact-driven development programme, an approximate €10,000 in funding and further strengthening their projects—propelling them through 2023 and beyond. Applications close by January 31, 2023. 

Submit yours at makeitcircular.whatdesigncando.com.

Conversations with Diaspora: Noreen Hiskey of Inland Curry

The range of international cuisines available in cities is generally, though not exclusively, determined by its immigrants. The diversity of offerings within each cuisine most definitely is.

Noreen Hiskey lives five hours inland from Seattle in the city of Spokane, with a South Asian population of less than 1 percent. The Mangalorean home cook moved from Pune to Washington State over a decade ago, but grew deeper roots in the city when she began cooking for its residents.

For years, Noreen ran a popular blog called Picture The Recipe, where she first shared “random recipes I concocted in my kitchen” but eventually gravitated towards Indian flavours and the use of spices. The site offered step-by-step visual recipes making it super accessible for both inexperienced cooks as well as neurodivergent folks, and contained a large selection of western and Indian comfort foods and game day dishes. 

During the pandemic, the food blogger, chef and food photographer bought out local business Inland Curry, a weekly takeout kitchen to serve up regional Indian dishes never offered in Spokane before — think beef ularthiyathu, chana bateta and semolina kheer, changing perceptions and palates around Indian cuisine.

LOVER chatted with her to learn about her journey.

Photograph by Ari Nordhagen

How did your journey when it comes to food begin? 

I guess my journey begins with a passion for food as an expression of love that was definitely passed on to me from my mother. She always showed friends, family, neighbors and even strangers that she cared by feeding them or sharing recipes and just talking about food in general. 

I found myself moving to the United States 10 years ago, not knowing anyone but my husband and his immediate family and started trying to make connections through food and inviting people over for a meal. Seeing my passion for food, my husband encouraged me to start a recipe blog, which I still have to this day (although I'm not active on it anymore). It also got me hooked on food photography which I still actively do professionally today. 

How did you get into cooking for others?

After 8 years or so of food blogging and being online, I realized how much I missed the human/social element of cooking and actually feeding people and watching their reactions to it while making memories & connections around the table. This led to me doing a few intimate supper-club-style dinners at home, putting it out there to see if anyone in my little town of Spokane, WA was interested in a unique experience of Indian food and hospitality. To my surprise my dinners sold out instantly and I kept getting asked to do it more often. 

Doing it at home with a baby under the age of 1 year was challenging most times, but amazingly enough new doors opened up when a local restaurant owner (and now good friend) invited me to do pop-up style dinners at her restaurant on days they were closed. My 10-12 person dinners become 40-50 person experiential style dinners with the focus on changing the perception of Indian food but expanding menus to include more regional flavours I grew up eating and not just the Indian restaurants in the U.S, standards like Butter Chicken and Chicken Tikka Masala. 

My pop-up style dinners were popular and proved how much Spokane was open to good food and experiences. Through my pop-up and work as a food photographer around town, I grew connections with the close knit small food-business owners and restaurateurs around Spokane. 

Is that how Inland Curry came about?

I guess my name made its way to a Dan Todd who at the time owned a small weekly take-out business selling a rotating menu of Indian dishes he had learnt, from a friend with the same business model in another small town in Northern Idaho. It was called Inland Curry. His family had decided to uproot and move to Arizona and he was looking for someone to run his business and through the grapevine he had heard of my pop-up dinners and reached out to me.

It was serendipitous and I jumped at the chance to have a regular space to do Indian food and an established business to take over, so I made him an offer to buy out the business (instead of just running it). 

I now do regional Indian menus every Thursday for take-out and patio dine-in as well as catering and occasional pop-ups at other locations and that's where I am at right now.

When it comes to eating, Spokane has had a bit of a cultural renaissance over the last decade. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like when you first moved there as compared to now.

There has definitely been a huge growth in the food scene as compared to a decade ago when I moved and most options to dine-out were either fast-food or big chain restaurants. Since then Spokane has grown in population and diversity as more people from neighbouring states like Oregon, California and even western Washington are relocating to the area because of affordability. Which in turn has brought more opportunities for smaller restaurants and an openness to diverse cuisines as bigger cities would offer. It has been great watching this growth in the food industry here unfold over the last 5-6 years and I'm excited for the future of the city.

At Inland Curry, you cook everything from green kheema to pork bafat. What goes on in your brain when putting together a menu?

I honestly cook like my mom used to at home back in Pune, however I try to stick with a region, city or cultural group while deciding on a menu. For example I did a Goan menu with chicken cafreal, peas pulav, vegetable caldeen and coconut dal. I have done Bohra cuisine, Mumbai street food, Kashmiri food to Parsi cuisine and Kerala, Tamil Nadu menus in the past. 

So I really mix it up giving them a taste of ‘if you went to someone's house and got to eat their regular family-style dinner’ food. I also tend to stick with dishes I am most comfortable making which come down to the dishes I have eaten the most (thanks to my mom, friends and neighbours sharing their food and cuisines with us) and are very familiar with the flavours to try to recreate them even if I haven't cooked them myself before.

You’re also a food photographer! What do you get to photograph that you enjoy?

I absolutely fell in love with food photography when I started blogging. Making food look so good that you want to try it right then and there took years of practice and something I will enjoy honing in for years to come. I have since shot for multiple publications and also numerous restaurants and food truly is creative art and getting to photograph that which chefs pour so much of themselves in is such a joy. After years of having to cook and photograph food that I made myself it is very refreshing when I shoot for another chef, business or restaurant so I am not having to wear both hats at the job, shuffling between stove and table setup and I can fully focus on just the photography aspect. 

I recently wrapped up shooting a client cookbook with over 85 recipes in the span of 5-6 months while still doing Inland Curry and tending to a toddler. It was really cool to learn not only the process but also to nurture a different perspective and keep in mind the scope of the project, where everything had to have a cohesive style and honour the author-cook's vision.

Click here for Noreen’s recipes for pork vindaloo and vanilla cardamom kulfi.
Visit Inland Curry online here and here.

Art Matters: How to Introduce Your Kids to Art

Research shows that art is a universal form of expression as basic as speaking and singing. So it would make sense for parents and teachers to use art as a learning tool to develop skills — sensory, motor and visual. The Art Insider shares fives ways which you can introduce your kid to art (including the #1 question to ask them!)

© Bob and Roberta Smith

Make going to the gallery an outing:

When I was a kid, every couple of months, my mom would plan a day out that included a movie at Sterling cinema, a meal at Samovar cafe and then a stroll around Jehangir art gallery. Though I was too small to understand any of the works, creating a ritual around looking at art, made it something to look forward to!


Show them art made of unusual materials:

Kids need to be engaged and stimulated and most often, paintings maybe too two dimensional to interest them. Start with showing them installations or sculptures that can be touched and felt.


Carry a sketchbook and pencil everywhere:

It really emphasises the idea that art can be anything and anywhere by getting them to draw things from their surrounding. Plus it’s an easy activity to keep fidgety toddlers engaged.


Tell the truth:

Don’t strip away the meaning of a piece or make it more palatable just because they’re kids. You can use art to start a difficult conversation or introduce a new idea to them and show them that art has meaning and purpose.


Ask them “What do you see?”:

When taking kids to a museum or gallery, asking them for their perspective, takes away the idea of there being a ‘right’ answer to what the work is about and therefore encourages them to fire up their own imagination. After all, art is as much about what the audience sees as it is about the artist’s intent, making it the perfect tool to encourage creative little minds.

Shivani Sambhare is an independent arts writer and consultant who likes coffee, historical fiction and anything art deco. Follow her on Instagram at @the.artinsider.

Art Matters: My Art A-ha Moment!

About 6 years ago I had an 'A-ha' moment when it came to art. I was completing a course in Curatorial Studies at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum (must do!) and as part of the series, gallerist Mortimer Chatterjee was able to take us to the Tata Insitutute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai to view their collection.

If you are a student of Indian art history or have yourself visited the TIFR, you might know that it houses one of the most significant collections of modern Indian art anywhere in the world. Wherever you look you see rare works by India's greatest artists, Zarina Hashmi and Nasreen Mohamedi, and Souzas and Razas... oh my!

How and why an institution such as TIFR built this collection is a story worth reading in the book that Mort and his partner Tara Lal have put together on the collection, or if you are lucky, told by the writers themselves, but here's one quick fact: In the 1950s when Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru allotted a large piece of land in the city to build a science institution, Homi Bhabha, the director envisioned a space where art and science could come together, housing not only India's brightest scientific minds but also a museum like collection of work by new and established artists. 

Most significantly, 1% of the institute's annual budget was allocated to acquiring art.

Now when was the last time you heard something like that? And boy was that 1% put to good use by nurturing the careers of artists such as VS Gaitonde and MF Hussain. 

At a time when we continually lament the loss of interest in art and culture by our generation as a whole, what the TIFR story does for me is that it helps to remember that not so long ago as a country we believed that art has a place equal to all other endeavours and with this belief and the infrastructure to support it, our cultural ecosystem flourished. 

Art matters and investing in it also matters.

Shivani Sambhare is an independent arts writer and consultant who likes coffee, historical fiction and anything art deco. Follow her on Instagram at @the.artinsider.

Collector’s Guide to Art: How to Start Your Own Collection

We get so many queries on how to go about buying a piece of art. Which artists to look at? Where does one buy from? How can I make sure it’s a good investment? Buying art can be intimidating! But it doesn’t have to be. The Art Insider shares her 5 basic rules to help you start collecting.

Original works by Saubiya Chashmawala from Tarq, Mumbai, Sri Lankan artist Prageeth Rathnayake and a limited edition print by Bernard Hartmann from Yellow Korner, Hongkong .

LOOK, LOOK, LOOK:

Like everything else in life, the more you see and and experience, the better chance you have of knowing what you want. Go to museums, walk into galleries, attend art fairs and biennales, follow hashtags on Instagram such as #indianart #artist #artistsoninstagram. A lot of it may not make sense at first but soon, you will realise that there are certain colours, themes and artists you’re drawn to. I would also recommend attending an art walk in your city where experts take you to galleries and break down works for you


START SMART:

For many people posters or copies of famous artworks are often the first piece they buy. If you’re drawn to a particular famous artwork, sure buy the poster, but understand that it is not a collectors item. Instead, look for lithographs or limited edition prints which though slightly more expensive, hold a far greater value. 


LOOK FOR CLUES:

Follow accounts like @affordableartfairhk and look out for StoryLtd’s affordable art auction. Credible sources like these have already filtered artists for their buyers so you already have a base to start with. Then follow trends. Is a work being sold for higher than their estimated value? Has an artist sold better than expected a few times in a row? This should point you in the right direction. 


SLIP INTO DMs:

Many young artists are now selling at least some pieces through their Instagram accounts. Interact with those you like and don’t be afraid to ask questions about the work, and yes, even the price. If they won’t sell direct, they will refer you to the gallery that handles their work.


DON’T BE AFRAID OF MISTAKES:

Here’s the bottom line. You need to love the piece you buy. Go with your gut!

Shivani Sambhare is an independent arts writer and consultant who likes coffee, historical fiction and anything art deco. Follow her on Instagram at @the.artinsider.