Students in Tamale, Northern Ghana, explored their daily relationships with UPFs and the systems that supply them. With the help of local artists, they used creative tools — like photography and storytelling — to share what food means in their lives.

Through participatory photography workshops, students documented their food environments, such as their local vendors, corner shops and how they share and eat together. These images showed just how common UPFs are. Their photos were displayed alongside the artist’s work, creating a powerful exhibition about how UPFs are produced, advertised, and sold locally.

They turned their ideas into pledges for action and shared them online in a digital exhibition. This inspired the project team to bring the same questions to young people in the UK: Are the challenges around food similar in Bristol? How do they play out here?

Students from Bristol took part in a creative workshop alongside community food organisations and university researchers to voice their perspectives on and experiences of food systems at a creative engagement event we organised at We The Curious.

I transformed the workshop space into a banquet-style room, with tables covered in paper so everyone could draw, doodle, or sculpt their ideas. I captured the drawings young people made and told the story of the workshop and the wider process in a Zine.

The young people’s drawings shaped the form of the Zine. On the back page is an invitation to continue conversations about food systems, helping the zine serve as a research outcome and engagement tool.

Find out more about the research here