Mikro Food Farming (WS 23/24)

As this project progressed, workshops were held in Cape Town in March 2024 with gardening experts from various townships and students from RWTH Aachen University. The aim was to jointly develop, test and implement low-cost and flexible systems for growing vegetables in townships and informal settlements between the shacks (corrugated iron huts) – i.e. in very confined spaces.

The first workshop week, led by Marlene and Christian from Hack Your Shack, together with the Khayelitsha Canoe Club took place in the Khayelitsha Wetland Park. Two structural prototypes were developed here: the “Flow-Grow-Tower” and the multifunctional “Multi-Farming-Shelf”. However, the most important finding of the workshop was the need to transfer knowledge from gardeners to (as yet) non-gardeners. The creation of an information poster for the garden doors of home gardeners was therefore tackled as a further pilot project.

The Gugulethu Urban Food Forest Initiative was in charge of the second workshop week at Edith Stephens Wetland Park. The instructions for the two prototypes were tested in practice with people from Gugulethu – three of each were built. The information poster was further developed in intensive discussion and planning sessions.

In the third week of the workshop, the RWTH students and learners from Salt River High School trialled the multifunctional shelf as a system suitable for use in schools. The project could be followed directly on all social media channels. The results were published on the dooiy.org website with DIY instructions.