During the first day of the festival held at Viikki Campus on Thursday 12.9, the library square, usually grey and empty, was filled with life, people and colours of a farmers market as well as workshop action. Energy was flowing all through the afternoon on the square, as well as all the way into the tropical glasshouse of the library building, rarely used, where a few exciting presentations took place. The farmers market was so popular that most of the farmers sold out their products. This transformation could possibly be made a regular event and be successful, considering the amount of people crossing the empty square every day. Furthermore, the farmer's market's format could be developed and stretched into different directions and variations.

The second day of the event brought us back to Happi, in Suvilahti, for the more formal part of the programme. By organising events both on the scientific campus (also more formal) and in cultural locations (informal in the case of Happi), we hoped that a crisscrossing and cross-polination of participants from the scientific and cultural fields could happen. The programme at Happi included several workshops in the morning, and in the afternoon 2 keynotes, 3 transdisciplinary panel discussions on Meat, Waste and Food Culture; as well as a lightning talks programme with a very diverse and exciting range of presentations. Not surprisingly the audience was very different from the previous day, but we did manage to get a diversity of people to attend on both days. Happi offered a relaxed context for discussions all day, and the audience rapidly activated with questions for the speakers. The Lightning Talks didn't really feature any presentations by any scientists as such, so we will need to think of how to encourage academics to participate, and present their research to the general audience in future. From Happi, we left to Kääntöpöytä for our closing 'Best Before' dinner: D.I.W.O. pizzas and soups by Chef Antti Nurkka were on the menu. Surprisingly the people who joined us for dinner there, were again a very different group, and the queue to the pizza oven remained long late into the night, and probably many improbable encounters took place there.

Transdiciplinarity was experienced on various levels: For the organisers in looking for overlaps in ideas, approaches and for a common language; on the level of the locations, as well as that of the actual content of the event itself. We believe that Foodycle succeeded in creating a space for sharing ideas for sustainable food, a space where the relationships within the food system can be explored, questioned, reinvented. This edition of Foodycle 2013 can been seen as the pilot of the first art+design+science+activism event around food in Helsinki. Various ideas of how develop the event further next year have already emerged. Working around one specific theme would for instance help strengthen the structure of the event. We hope that many of the participants will continue contributing and help Foodycle to become a community of people with different backgrounds sharing ideas & tools for improving our food system. In order to make this possible, we are considering organising smaller events and gatherings around the year as well. We will keep you posted. Don't hesitate to contact us if you wish to suggest cooperations or proposals for future activity

Streams of the Panels discussions and Lightning Talks from 13.9 can be found here while photographs of the event are here.