Nina Cutler

Future farmscapes: agri-policy, cosmopolitics, speculation and co-design

My practice-based research explores how design can support the imagining of cosmopolitical futures of UK farming, and to what extent this can foster a more-than-human approach in agri-environmental policy-making and design.

Building from my design practice as a policy designer in the UK Civil Service, I look to investigate through two design projects that make use of speculative, participatory and inventive methods - one with Defra’s Farming and Countryside Programme (FCP) Policy Design Lab and the other with regenerative farms in England to co-create farming speculations. I draw on STS and feminist technoscience to both inform and analyse my practice.

By co-designing alternate visions of agro-ecological futures that can be explored with wider policy actors, the research aims to support and enhance more equitable transitions to sustainable food systems, multispecies flourishing and environmental care.