Welcome to Learning out Loud! This is where CFIL collaborators reflect on what we’ve been learning and trying in this experimental space. Thanks for joining us on our journey, and if you have any thoughts on what you’re reading we’d be happy to hear from you!

The peer-to-peer prototype emerged from a resurfacing truth of how community- and network-oriented circularity is. The same thing can be said for the food system itself. Our food system is built on relationships. It involves a massive system of actors — growers, distributors, manufacturers, servers, eaters, rescuers, to name a few — and we all have so much to learn from and teach each other about what we can be doing differently; what we can be doing better.

Collaborate

With this in mind, we convened a group of five businesses in the lab around the question: how might we create a space that encourages and simplifies connection between all kinds of food agents so that knowledge can be shared and action against food waste can be tackled as a community. There was a collective thirst for such a space, a forum in which those in the food system could share, find, and empower their efforts towards circularity in their professional and personal lives. This prototype was the vessel to capture how that can best be supported amongst a group of determined, and very busy, entrepreneurs eager to be a part of a circular food system, and ready to explore what that might look like.

Evaluate

We navigated predetermining the ‘best’ format, virtual or in-person, within our limited capacity in the lab, to design such a platform. We sifted through existing websites, apps, service providers, along with the feedback we were receiving from the businesses to imagine what this community could really use, and to test what might be accessible, useful, and reasonable to maintain. Though we realized that such a network was already being navigated and negotiated in front of us, within the CFIL lab with over twenty food actors, designers, and circular thinkers. We had been looking too narrowly at the prototype as a finite testing group, one in which we needed to make something new, when the lab had been something of a test all along. In our collaborations across all prototypes, in holding regular gatherings, in all the 1:1 meetings, we were building a peer to peer network.

Test

Businesses continued to come to our large-group sessions and offer up their learnings and insights in exchange for what we came to recognize as a common purpose. We were all doing this in different neighborhoods, in different pockets of the system, and at different paces, but it was all in the service of something beyond our own circumstances, a better, more equitable circular food system for our community. We come together to imagine, design, and test interventions within a system built far before and beyond us, one that we don’t always agree with. One that is primed for change. So much more happens when we are working through these systemic, wicked problems together, then when we are up against them on our own. This lab, and our times together, illustrates how invaluable investing in relationships is now more than ever.

Iterate

We’re learning that this network building takes time, and how it might best be supported as we seek to secure its future. We ran some exercises in-person with the group to see how everyone might crowdsource some solutions or feedback on questions that they hold in their quest for circularity. We have followed up to see if those connections have helped them face that challenge and continue to consider how to build capacity within everyone’s days to explore and follow up on those opportunities. It’s a constant balance of doing what we all must do each day, doing what we want to be doing, and all the while moving in the direction we want to see our operations, and community, go towards.

We are still learning, iterating, and adjusting how this might look, still trying to find out how to best negotiate time, accountability, and ownership of such a network. Industry needs to be at the table, but how much time spent organizing and coordinating can be asked of an already understaffed and overworked group? This will continue to be navigated in the coming months and years, as our commitments continue to lie with the CFIL community we have been building and growing, and with the connections and investments that each of us have within the larger system. All to say, we are much farther along than when we started, but we have much more to learn and to do together.

At this point in the prototype, our mission has shifted slightly. We now convene more around how we might continue to support and grow this network of actors in our food system so that collaboration, sharing and implementation of promising practices is fostered. This is work that is continuous, dynamic, and collective, and I’m so grateful for our peer to peer network within the lab, and to continue to support it as it grows and finds its best form.

Disclaimer: the opinions and perspectives expressed within each of these posts are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions and perspectives of all CFIL participants.

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