Counter Culture is a public workshop and speculative dining experience exploring the possible futures of cultured or 'Lab-Grown' meat. The workshop questions how members of the public guide scientific research and have a voice in our collective future?
The session, run in collaboration with Scientists at Genspace and New Harvest, invited participants to an eating experience based in a future suffering from climate collapse. These researchers had of course considered possible ethical consequences of cultured meat, but had never explored its implications for restaurant settings.
After the dining experience, attendees entered a workshop to create their own unsettling concepts for restaurants of the future. The imagined worlds were communicated back to scientists using realistic websites, to contribute new ideas and unconsidered ethical issues to our understanding of how restaurant culture might adapt to the popularisation of cultured meat.
Experiencing alternative realities loosens our assumptions, opening us up to radical change. By imagining how our world could be changed by scientific research this project aimed to open up a space for new voices, perspectives and foresight in the development of cultured meat.
