Something For EveryoneA shared eating experience that improves family communication. I want to use subtle interventions to raise awareness of the importance of a family meal. This will create new memories and revive old ones, instigate one off moments and improve relationships through sharing, making use of existing objects living on the table.

Memory through eating does not only

go down to your stomach but also up

to your head.

Marije Vogelzang

New Harvest

What is New Harvest Day?

What is New Harvest Day?

New Harvest Day is about bringing people together to share the experience of a repeating family meal.

New Harvest Day is a new festival day, which happens four times every year at the beginning of the harvest of the new season. It is about coming together through eating, with local, seasonal produce and family love at the heart of the experience. “This Season” is a brand that supports the day and supplies the fresh produce to the families. Children from the family will become adventurous and appreciative of food and appreciate what it means to eat together this way. My aim is not only to establish and re-establish strong bonds and relationships within families through shared experience and intimate interaction, but for the children to then take this sense of awareness into their own adult lives and pass it onto their children. I want break some ofthe confines around dinner table etiquette and make people comfortable being with one another. Value is added to the event each time by prompting and collecting memories, capturing small moments and allowing people to learn about one another. Everyone has a part to play, so the entire family have to be there to enjoy the full meal, which is shared out amongst one another, giving the food to one another as a gesture.

The family come together through sharing, where dinner table etiquette is established. This however is allowed to be broken in very specific, non offensive ways through activity that the whole family take part in together, not to single out an ill-behaved individual.

Meet the McCarrons

Meet the McCarrons

This is Mum and Dad Julie and Jim, with their two sons Drew and Adam. Adam is the youngest and he still lives at home with Jim and Julie but Drew has his own flat. He has a full time job and although he doesn’t live that far from his folks, he hardly goes back home, not for a family meal anyway.He makes an effort to go to every New Harvest Day though. He especially liked it when Adam was a bit younger and still looked up to him in that gawpy wide-eyed way only little brothers do. Drew would always impress him with stories and it was good to find out about his days at school, which Drew used to go to. He could share memories about that with him as well. Does the canteen still permentantly smell like hot dogs? Does Mr McDaid still get bit of flem in his moustache when he’s raging? For Jim and Julie they get to learn about both of their sons, and catch up with Drew who they won’t have sat down like this with for a while. Julie normally does most of the cooking, although she enjoys the interactions when everyone pitches in and shares some of the cooking, it’s nice to eat food that someone else has put some of themselves into. They are always happy to be together on this day.

This Season

This Season is the brand associated with New Harvest Day and supply the locally harvested food that is in season at that time of the year. This means the meal will be different for each season, and even year on year depending on what’s particularly good at that time. It is about supplying honest, nutrituous food and for the people consuming it to be aware of foods importance within a family. All the suppliers are family owned farms and businesses, many with a long and rich history. This isn’t like turkey and sprouts at Christmas, or Pancake Day or Burns day or any other festival associated with a specific food. Each family will add value to the experience each time by preparing their own meal from the ingredients of the land. Home cooked meals are important, not only for health reasons but feeding someone is an intimate thing to

do, and one that should be appreciated and felt. You are giving someone something to put inside their body. It should be enjoyable for them to know what that is, and a further appreciation is created by letting them know a bit about it, also making it seem a bit more personal and gives a sense of occasion in celebration of sharing food.

This Season

All the ingredients from This Season have information about the food itself and where it has come from, which is supplied in a hamper. The hamper then serves as a collection tool, holding memories and objects from previous meals which establish connections and create meaningful memories. I think this would be like when I go to my parents house and they bring out this old box with all the Christmas decorations and it smells like tinsel, the senses are a strong route to memory.

The Objects Living On The Table

The Plates

The table cloth here, denies it’s association with a set table and serves as a means of breaking that etiquette. People around the table are invited to write on the table cloth by the placement of markers on the table. As well as giving permission to be disruptive to normal dinner table discourse, this becomes both a communicative and expressive device, as well as giving permanence to moments of interest of each meal. This also could lead to memories if the table cloth is taken out again at a later time. As a way of ending the meal each person rips their piece of the table cloth, which allows for a personal memento to be removed from the experience. Each person is connected to the table through the tablecloth by a longer strip which becomes a napkin, and are therefore connected to one another, through the table and the food that lies in front of them. This symbolises the

how important it is eating together as a family whilst literally connecting them. People always have their own seat at the table, so each space is colour coded, and indicates for a specific setting to be laid at that space for the meal to be shared.

The Cloth

The Objects Living On The Table

The Utensils

The Plates

The plates match to a colour on the table cloth for each person. They have a message embossed onto the bottom of them, leaving a mark on the table, so that when they are lifted from the table, there is a prompt for further communication and to keep people at the table for longer, or to create a new conversation for whoever clears the table to return to.The plates also have a message etched onto their surface which collects stains to reveal the words you, me, us, them. These words symbolise the conversation which has taken place over the meal, as well as being words of both unity and division so they think about how they unite as a family unit and their individual role within it.

Each set of coloured utensils correspond with the colour of the plate and the food which is placed on it. Each set of utensils perform as tools specific to the food that is on that plate. For example, the green plate is set with salad, so the utensils here are salad servers and the purple plate is set with meat, so the utensils are a fork and carving knife.Each space also has one ambiguous utensil which incites curiosity and playful behaviour amongst the family.

The Cloth The ChairsThe introduction of rocking chairs is a subtle change to relax people and again to break some of the rigid constraints which are forced when eating together at a table. It’s also a really nice thing to be comforted after eating, and it’s something that happened to us all as babies after feeding, so it’s reminiscent of a maternal bond.The chairs are made so they can also lie still, and when the family used them, they didn’t rock in them whilst eating, but comforted themselves afterwards by rocking the chair back and forth.

The New Experience

The dinner is all about getting people to share and feed one another. Each person is served with one specifi c element of the meal and given the specifi c utensils to serve it. So each person serves from their plate to another until everyone has a full meal. The simple and honest presentation of the food suggest that each is a single element of an entire meal.Being together as a family over dinner is one of the most important ways of knowing, sppreciating and most importantly learning about your other family members. Through sharing food and being comfortable enough to break the conventional rules around each other in your own home, leads to trusting relationships and understanding communication between family members, through simple gesture and interaction at the dinner table.The experience is one which is repeated, but valuable and different each time. This happens through the ongoing memories that have been created at previous meals leading to rolling conversation. It is being at ease with your family in a trusting environment where the family bond is realised and strengthened. Through the objects above and the interactions they induce, people are brought together by the basic human need we all carry out, eating. Feeding someone is a personal and sensitive thing, that might not be comfortable outwith a family setting. The senses have a strong link to emotion and memory, so the enjoyable food should lead to an enjoyable experience in which everyone in the family participates on an equal level at these specifi c times. This leads to a mutually respectful relationship between family members, encouraging good communication. In the new experience

moments are captured to become memories. Through conversational prompts from the plate, people are invited to reveal something about themselves that the others didn’t already know. I wanted the experience to be one in which people were relaxed and having fun so they would feel natural and at ease with parting with peronal information. It worked really well and people didn’t really have to think about what they were saying, it was almost like it was an allowance for them to get rid of something they had been holding on to, and it was all taken in good fun. Beginning the meal with tearing a piece off the bread incited a culture of sharing at the table which was deeper than just the food itself. However, it was light hearted and enjoyable, I didn’t want it to turn into confession. Tearing the cloth at the end, in the same way they started with the bread, let people take away pieces of the table cloth which had moments from that specifi c dinner experienced marked onto them.

The New Experience

The meal began with everyone breaking the bread from the same loaf, which set the tone for the behaviour appropriate at the table and wa symbolic of sharing for the rest of the meal. Without promting, Julie began sharing out her food and Jim, Drew and Adam did the same, until everyone had a bit of everything. They really began to have fun when they began to draw on the table, they played games and were laughing and interacting with each other in a new way, and this eased them to reveal things about themselves once prompted when the plates were lifted. Jim admitted to smoking “whacky backy” on a secret stag do in Amsterdam 29 years ago, only for Julie to admit she’d known all along. This created a new bit of concersation and was a real lasting memory from the dinner together which they will remember next time they have New Harvest. After the food was taken from the table everyone became very relaxed and rocked themselves in the chairs, making them feel at ease with one another and comfortable in themselves for that little bit of self revelation. Finally to end the meal the table cloth is torn by each person in the same way the meal begun with the bread. This way, they can keep interesting or memorable parts of the table cloth and have a physical reminder of the experience they just had, which they will then remember each time they see it.

Add something to the table

Add something to the table

Craig Howie Product Design 2012