Martha Wiles - Regenerative Appetite

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Final trophy for vertical gallery

close up of vertical gallery trophy

Medals all ready to be handed out to those that i am celebrating - they were received really well, being worn with pride once handed out and looking and choosing between all the different variations of the medals that i had given to each group. (photograph by charlie ashman)

FINAL CONEXT FILM - Filmed by myself, Charlie Ashman, and Daniel Parry

Working with organisations throughout my project

Over the last couple of months, i have been volunteering with various organisations around manchester that work to tackle food waste in different ways. This has given me relationships pool of people that care about food waste and quite frankly have allowed me to stay positive throughout this project - when the research i was conducting seemed pretty bleak.

Free community lunch provided by Manchester Urban Diggers - people help grow the food and in return they get fed a hearty meal - reconnecting people's understanding of food to be something that is grown not made [first visited 9th of december]

Visiting Manchester Urban Diggers

Back in December, I volunteered at MUDs site in platt fields. The experience was definitely one i'll be going back to. It was lovely to see such a big turn out for a project to connect people to the origins of their food.

I spoke to other volunteers as we completed jobs around the site to prepare for the winter market the following weekend. I spoke to them about my project and in particular about their views on why and how we have a problem with food waste.

I have continually been inspired by their work through the project and i've come to realise the importance to me emotionally throughout the project. Whilst constantly reading articles about the doom and gloom of the lack of change to the public's attitudes to food waste, going to help people in manchester be active in educating and reducing food waste has really helped me keep going in this project.

Working with Milk and Honey

I volunteered at Ben's zero waste supper club back in november, where he used excess food he received from fareshare as part of their cafes produce and the well - meal kits for students that cannot afford to feed themselves (and teaching them how to be versatile cooks).

When i volunteered, i was involved hands on with the cooking and serving of the food at the event and got the chance to develop a relationship with Ben.

meals made from saved food from fareshare when volunteering at milk and honey (Novemeber)

image taken by Ollie at peacemeal from their instagram volunteering at their unit chopping the vegetables ready for cooking on the friday

Volunteering with Peacemeal

I heard about Peacemeal through talking to others volunteering at plattfields market garden. They operate out of a storage locker in Hulme, using produce collected from fareshare (a national food redistribution service) to create meals for homeless shelters, women's refuges, and foodbanks.

Peacemeal is a very small grassroots start-up that makes such a massive difference and shows ways that excess food can be repurposed to create change for good in the community.

Unicorn Grocery

It has been hard to try and work with unicorn grocery, since it is a co-op and so it seems there is no particular person or group of people that are willing to speak to me or have the time to speak to me. However, I emailed them to write an article about my project and food waste in their newsletter that they provide for the customers in store.

Planning of my awards ceremony to be held at seesaw to bring my project all together

Poster for the event to be held at SEESAW on the 19th of April

To make the poster, i decided to expand my skills and try printing in RISO understanding the different needs of the print and the process was good - as well as working out an image that encapsulates my project in this event. Riso fits with my ethos as well - using recycled paper and sustainable ink made from soya

Organising the Event

I have been organising the event with the help of meeting with General Manager of the venue (SEESAW) Katy. She is a curator and so i have found the process of working with her incredibly useful to working out the context of the project in a space outside of university.

She also encouraged me to try to apply visual arts language to bring conceptualisation to my ideas. The brainstorm for the name of the event was hard to try and work out a punchy yet poetic name that explains what my exhibition is about.

Regenerative Appetite

It combines the my understanding of my ideas and the word appetite brings the buzzword of Regenerate to the ideas of food. "Regenerative" means regrowing, restoring and changing a previous damage - my project is looking to provide a conversation piece about our damaged food system. It also refers to the regenerative agriculture movement that my trophy is about.

It’s the start of a busy week of events for us here at @seesawspace!

First up on Weds 19th April from 6-9pm for ‘Regenerative Appetite’, an award ceremony conceived by Martha Wiles to celebrate the extraordinary people and projects of Manchester that are confronting food waste.

‘Regenerative Appetite’ celebrates organisations from Manchester that educate, reclaim and challenge food waste through ornate illustrative ceramic trophies, to begin conversations about food waste. Instead of confrontation, play is harnessed to enact change. Using wild foraged clay, the trophies celebrate the work of organisations like the Manchester Urban diggers, Milk and Honey Café, Peace Meal and Unicorn Grocery.

Decorated with textures from food waste and a narrative of returning dignity to the farmer that's achieved when you give a face to the food you buy. The recognition of human labour, time and care to nurture a seed into something nourishing is mimicked by the craftsmanship to elevate foraged clay into an object of value. If you care about the future of feeding our planet in a sustainable way by regenerating our food systems, come and meet the people that are working to do just that.

Join us for an evening of drinks, art and conversation - all are welcome and it's free to enter.
The awards will be presented at 7:30.

‘Regenerative Appetite’ forms part of Martha’s undergraduate work for @mcrschart, we are delighted to be supporting her, as well as other BA and MA Manchester School of Art students - offering them a platform to showcase their work and talents.

Medal Development

Casting experiments - having used a lot of sprig moulds in my previous work on the trophies, i was trying to work out how to translate the same detail you can achieve with plaster on smaller, flatter objects. I began by trying to cast metal cans that i had stamped words into to get a metallic feel to the wild clay.

I then pressed these moulds into the clay - but i found that the wild clay didn't pick up the detail of the mould as much as they needed to be able to read it. But through experimenting with these moulds i began trying to to carve into the moulds to translate my drawings more directly.

Original plan of casting the medals

working out the anatomy of the medals - terminology etc

doodling to create a visual narrative that conveys the celebration of what the organisations do.

initial cast tin can tests used to stamp into slabs of wild clay.

first Plaster cast carving test

stamped cast - i love the quality of the edge, but it's clear that more tests are needed

I found that stamping the clay with carved plaster disks allowed me to get enough detail and have a lot of freedom to translate my drawings into low relief medals. It was quite hard at first to be able to write the slogans backwards and to add three dimensions to a 2D drawings - sculpting a face from carving out a negative was a bit of process !!

working out how many medals and the messages on them to apply to the people receiving them

I tried to do a new carving each day for a week or so to try and improve the designs better and working out the best tools, and that soaking the plaster in water before hand means for easier carving. I also needed to work out the ideal depths to carve to get the most readable writing.

I also had to check that the nichrome (withstand the temperature of an earthernware firing) wire wasn't too thin to hold the weight or bend a lot when attached to the topbar.

Medal Design for milk and honey and /or peacemeal

medal design for unicorn / MUD

"Royal Society of Food Waste Fighters"

Inspired by Carl Clerkins "Learned SOCIETY OF EXTRA ORDINARY OBJECTS" I thought to create a made up fictional society to unite all the people I'm working with would be a good way to create a network between them all. However now i think a more general community like "manchester against food waste" would make more sense.

I'm trying to complete all the medals by fridays firing and so i am going to develop the designs and try lots of different carvings to have a lot of options to build into the final medals that will be given out at the ceremony.

Ribbons

There's a reason i didn't do textiles - and that is that i am terrible at sewing, but to assemble the medals onto the top bar and loop through the jump rings i needed to find the best way to sew the two together.

I began with the sewing machine but i couldn't get the neat precise finish with all the metal and slippy fabrics so i had to hand stitch them in the end.

In terms of deciding on the pattern of the ribbons, I aimed for colours that would fit in my projects general branding - blue and gold and a hemp fabric, but also chose to include some gingham ribbon for its association with being a cloth for women to work in in both urban and rural areas, either on farms or in the home. It has a certain domestic comfort to it that I feel embellishes the medals with a deeper narrative.

It also has roots in Manchester from the cotton trade

trying to attach the medal to the top bar with a sewing machine

and failing miserably to achieve anything presentable enough

Creating the Clasp using the water-jet cutter

the mock up of the clasp in aluminium - we (the technician and I) altered the design to make the clasp bits wider and longer aswell as the holes larger to better fit the ceramic

testing the part on the topbar of the medals to check that it fits

Waterjet cutter mapping out the route it will take to cut the shape out of the brass - with the help of Matt from engineering

working out the workings of the clasp and how to translate it to the engineering minds of the men that operate the water jet cutter.

Front and back of one of the final medals

the back of the medal - message for the wearer only, showing the filed edges and the position on the top bar - i just need to add the pin

Each top bar is matched to a medal whose visual language matches the message on the top bar. For example dignity for farmers and the revolution hand holding the carrot pairs with it. Or the link between the soil and the spade.

finishing up the medals and preparing for the event !!

For the event tomorrow, i have made some leaflets to be printed on the Risograph to add context and an educational element to the exhibition, that people can take away with them.

these add value to the event as a take away pack of resources for people that might be interested to find out more - i'm going to add a page on my website to make it easier to find the links to all the resources Ive used for the project.

front and back cover of the leaflet

back of the leaflet - the most informative side

trying to get a grips with printing double sided on RISO

They're printed double sided and fold into a single page leaflet that is the outcome from lot of research and understanding of the issue i am aiming to deal with.

The front cover brings people to understand the issue, and then the inside is a map of the systems that link soil to the matter of food waste.

The back cover gives people a list of resources to help raise awareness of other organisations and educational sources that inspired me and hopefully inspire them - as well as giving the organisations i have worked with some publicity.

working out which medals to be presented to each recipient - which messages are most poignant to each organisation

Clasp

I have almost developed the clasp for the medals using the water-jet cut brass that i needle filed the edges and looped brass wire through to provide the pin element.

I still need to make sure they're clasped on tightly so that the top bar is gripped tightly and that the pin is functioning

I also think i need to sharpen the point of the pin so that it can go through peoples clothes fabric easily - Im going to use a nail file to sharpen it.

Speaking to Mark, i need to bend the hook a little further and add some resistance to the pin so that it holds tighter.

working out how to make a pin that works

final medals in context

medal on the body

Exploring Packaging

I explored packaging by creating a mock up of how i would present the medal in a box that would be upholstered - but i didn't finish it to the quality i would ideally have - so i found a historical example of a properly upholstered box shown below. I would have a base that would fit the medal and the bar in perfectly and it would be finished with blue velvet and gold paint. I would add insignia or the title of the project on the front, embossed. I regret not sorting this sooner to properly show you the finish i would aim for for the box.

a mock up of what i would want to present the medals in

I found a historical example of how royal mint coins would be presented - this is the quality i would want the larger box to be

Pricing - for access see email for password

Awards Ceremony - 19th April

A LOT of practice for my speech - these are the note cards i read from during it.

documenting the event - i had a photographer capture the evening - photographs by Charlie Ashman

The event consisted of my exhibited work, the finished medals laid out ready to be handed out to those that i invited - framed by drinks and a relaxed social environment to enable organisations in Manchester to network with each other to create a group of people fighting against food waste rather than several singular groups working towards the same ultimate goals.

All the organisations that fight food waste that i invited plus a representative from Wildfarmed all talking about their work and how they struggle fighting food waste in a cost of living crisis. They all agreed it was a great opportunity to network as they're often too busy to organise meeting other organisations. (photograph by charlie ashman)

Handing out the medals during my speech to the organisations Ive worked with - pictured here are the members of Peacemeal (photograph by charlie ashman)

Reflecting on my awards ceremony, i am pleased with how it went. Although i could always wish for a larger turnout to spread the message about food waste further than my immediate circle, It continues with the usual trend I've witnessed throughout this project where people don't want to talk about food waste.

However, the people i needed to come, came. It showed that the relationships i nurtured over the past year had payed off and that i had developed a circle of people that would support my work and will provide me with more opportunities to spread the message of my project.

I think that if I were to do something differently, i would like to have had boxes or some sort of packaging to present the medals in to make them a more protected keepsake - but perhaps that would have changed them from being functional wearable pieces that will withstand being worn to being pieces that people may be afraid to wear in fear of breaking them if they see that i presented them within protective boxes.

The event brought the meaning of my project into total fruition. It gave the trophies the space to become conversation pieces from being just decorative objects.

The feedback from the organisations that were involved was so heartwarming and i definitely want to continue holding events and try and get more people to them! I feel like my project has made some difference to fighting food waste in Manchester - even if its just letting the organisations fighting against food waste that they're doing great work.

After the event Ben Limb (milk and honey) emailed me:

"Getting to meet so many like minded people and also absolute “Food Waste Heroes” was easily the highlight of my year. I’m currently in the process of messaging everyone that I met that evening but I wanted to start off the process by sending this big thanks to you!" ~ Ben Limb

the end of the night, you can see the event poster in the foreground, and the leaflet i created to add context and educative value to the work, one of the founders of Manchester Urban Diggers at the bar and in the background, me, my mum and my trophies. photograph by charlie ashman

Watch my presentation and speech

at https://youtu.be/gLgVPsQfpoM or below...

filmed by Daniel Parry

FILM - Development

initial plan for the film - working out the tone and way of dealing with the subject matter to be uplifting but clear that its about food waste

editing the film on imovie - the middle of the film - upbeat, fast pace with images to break up scenes

still from the video - layering events over the top of each other - demonstrating how all these actions together can help us reduce food waste

sketchbook page developing the film further to have a beginning middle and end - breaking down the shots i needed to make the film clearer

Editing the Film

It'll begin with a slow romantic dinner scene and then suddenly the atmosphere of the film will change to be fast pace and inspiring - giving the context to the project.

I want the film to be uplifting and pretty inspiring to continue the positivity of the project to be shown in the film.

developing animation elements for the film

animating the title sequence for the film

Applying for Vertical Gallery

Below is my slides from the pitch i gave to Kate and Victoria, mapping out my intentions, the budget and trying to communicate my project.

Trophy for Vertical Gallery

yay !! I got it ! This trophy is by far my largest yet, it is almost half a metre tall and is my most ambitious build as well. The visual narrative of the piece represents the 5 principles of regenerative agriculture to raise conversations about soil health.

These principles are:

The Five Core Principles of Regenerative Agriculture

Minimise Soil Disturbance - healthy intact soil shown in the body of the trophy

Maximise Crop Diversity - the many different types of food waste shown in the vase of the trophy - cabbage, mushroom, leek etc...

Keep The Soil Covered - Cover leaves crop on the base of the trophy

Integrate Grazing Livestock - in the illustration on the base of the trophy - cows providing an integration of arable and pastoral farming

Seek Living Roots All Year - the handles are roots

The pieces are joined together by 5 figures - this collection of people represent the importance of community and support from society to help change the system. We need PEOPLE to uphold and change our approach to the food system.

The people holding the trophy are slightly wonky which is intentional - this is to represent that the journey to a better food system wont be perfect, but also as i was building the piece i realised that if this was a massive pot held above 5 peoples heads, it wouldnt be held straight - i personally thinks it adds to the imperfectly perfect aspect to my style

working notes from planning and making the trophy - this piece was made differently to the ones before - i designed it whilst i was making it - beginning with the throwing and designed from there.

technical workings out for the size and scale of the piece, and the spacing of the quotes.

building the trophies root handles

constructing the neck of the trophy to join the two parts together

close up of the trophy before it went into the kiln

applying the clear shiny glaze onto the areas i wanted to lustre

After Firing

the angle of the vase being held has been accentuated - but Im quite pleased with this. It adds to the handmade nature of the piece and i think it leans into the narrative that the food system is on the verge of collapse.

British Farmers cannot continue to be able to live off farming, our soil loses 0.6% of its carbon content every year, our health is being damaged by the cheap food were sold.

The lean of the piece adds narrative that without changing our approach to farming, our lives as we know it are starting to and will continue to collapse

Curation for the degree show and new designers

I have three bodies of work - the original three trophies, the medals and the trophy for vertical gallery that will be on display for the degree show. Heres how i will curate them.

curation for the pieces in the degree show

curation for the trophy for vertical gallery

working out how to attach medals to the wall

Exploring moving to more affordable functional ware

I threw this larger scale vase and covered it in mushroom sprigging, this opened up my mind to the possibility of creating pieces that are more affordable that still deal subtly with conversations about food waste.

Im going to explore the idea of sprigging some functional pieces that deal head on with food waste - such as fermentation jars or storage solutions that elongate the lifespan of produce.

Or create vases that are more affordable and can create household conversations about soil health (adding worms and healthy soil matter visual language within the piece).

Collaboration and professionalisation

Working with John Booth

During the workshop with john booth, I overheard him talking about a project with the manufacturers of toby jugs and that he might need some graduate help for this project. So, i emailed him about helping him out with this project and so at some point in June I'll be working with John to help create his ideas in ceramics for Toby Jugs. Very exciting and hopefully give me some more experience and a larger network of ceramists in the UK and not just manchester !!

screenshot of emails evidencing reaching out to begin / help with projects that externalise my skills

Working with Wildfarmed

From this project, i have realised an interest in gaining experience within regenerative agriculture and farming circles so....

After meeting with the representative from Wildfarmed (Hayley) at my event in april, she suggested that i visit the Wildfarmed head office and work with her in future projects to bring Wildfarmed to the Northwest area. This is a really exciting offer for me as i plan to bring my work out of the context of ceramics and into the space of talking about food waste and soil - and into a space where i am supporting a really positive movement towards regenerative agriculture.

Crocadon Farm

Crocadon Farm is a Soil-centric restaurant and farm, with a ceramics studio. They were recently awarded a Michelin Green star and i have followed their process to opening their restaurant in the last couple of months. i got my ash glaze off of the brain child of Crocadon - Dan Cox.

"We truly believe there is no future in gastronomy unless we make real change in our industry and focus on fixing the food and farming system. As custodians of this land, we are working to leave the soil in better health than we found it"

Having followed the work of crocadon farm for so long, when they offered a waitressing job for the summer i immediately applied to it despite not being free over summer. After graduating, i would like to gain some experience working in a soil centric environment like Crocadon and so sending my CV and interest in working there was a key step towards that.

Possible Exhibition of my work at Platt Fields Market garden event

Having invited M.U.D. to my event, they then had a greater idea of my project and the work i create, they have asked if i would exhibit my work in an exhibition that they're holding with Rebecca Lupton - known on instagram as @green_city_photos who does similar work to me - celebrating organisations in Manchester that are working towards sustainable goals through a creative outlet - in her case, photography.

Applying to Fresh 2023 - BCB

I am applying my trophies to Fresh BCB, below is the application form

Regenerative Appetite

Regenerative Appetite

Original plan of casting the medals

working out the anatomy of the medals - terminology etc

doodling to create a visual narrative that conveys the celebration of what the organisations do.

a mock up of what i would want to present the medals in

I found a historical example of how royal mint coins would be presented - this is the quality i would want the larger box to be

fresh application form

fresh application form

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