NH teamed up with Marianne Ellis, New Harvest board member and chemical engineer specializing in bioreactors for tissue engineering at the University of Bath; and David Benque, a speculative designer with the Design Interactions Program at the Royal College of Art in London and applied for a public engagement grant in the UK.
The grant is run by the Royal Academy of Engineering and is designed to:
- inspire creative public engagement with engineering projects
- stimulate engineers to share their stories, passion and expertise in innovative ways with wider audiences
- develop engineers’ communication and engagement skills
- create debate between engineers and people of all ages to raise awareness of the diversity, nature and impact of engineering.
Our idea is to develop a speculative design workshop focused on cultured meat for engineers across the UK. The workshop would get engineers involved in public engagement and futuristic thinking, while also interesting them in cultured meat research. After all, not few have called cultured meat “an engineering problem.”
Fingers crossed, you’ll be sure to find out here what happened with our application!