Co-creating the World Food Center

FreeUp has been actively involved in the concept development for the World Food Center in the municipality of Ede in the Netherlands. The WFC is an initiative to create an ‘experience center’ with the aim to intensify the dialwfcogue between the agri food sector and society, by showing how food is produced and by enabling visitors to experience this process – from farm to fork. At the WFC, the agri-food sector – together with the scientific community (Wageningen UR) and government agencies and public bodies – want to bridge the growing gap between people and the food they consume.

To shape and guide this co-creation process with many organisations, FreeUp got involved in the WFC concept development phase in November 2015, together with Ton Borsboom from Philips Design. We developed the WFC participation framework, based on interviews with more than 22 companies and organisations from the Food sector, which we enriched with trends and future signals, to make the framework future-proof.

This framwerken met posterework, together with a set of possible participation models, served as the basis for a series of interactive workshops with several organisations: food companies, agriculture, educational institutes and science. We called these workshops in Dutch: ‘WFC werkateliers’. Liesbeth Scholten, Jacomine van Veen, Ton Borsboom, as well as Debbie Evers, Sacha Kramer, and Thijs Mullink were responsible for developing, running and analyzing/reporting these werkateliers. Claire Tielens from Schuttelaar & Partners helped to organize the sessions.

participatiemodellenThe ‘werkateliers’ created engagement as well as key insights into the motivations, activities and value of the World Food center. Based on the outcomes of the participation workshops, inspirational WFC concepts were developed by the concept team. The presentation on 17th of March 2016 towaardekaarten the top managers and leaders of related companies, governments and institutes generated enthusiasm and willingness to be involved in the further realization of the World Food Center.

From the WFC newsletter of 30 March:

“Het WFC-­concept is gebaseerd op intensieve werkateliers met het merendeel van de 22 bedrijven en instellingen die participeren in de ontwerpfase. Dit heeft volgens Arjen van Tunen, CEO van Keygene, het onmisbare draagvlak gecreëerd dat nodig is om het WFC van de grond te laten komen. “Ik vind het geweldig”, vertelde hij op de bijeenkomst van 17 maart. “Goed dat jullie het interactief met participatie van de bedrijven doen. Het concept spreekt me inhoudelijk erg aan en ik verwacht dat het WFC een gezonde exploitatie krijgt.” Anita Scholte op Reimer (Ahold) is een van de deelnemers in het ontwerptraject. “De werkateliers maakten het concreter”, lichtte ze tijdens de bijeenkomst toe. “Dat heeft het WFC bij ons al veel ‘echter’ gemaakt. Wij vinden nu: laten we gewoon beginnen.””