Over the past three years, the Southern Africa Food Lab, in partnership with the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, GRAID and the NRF, has made use of Transformation Labs (or T-Labs) as a means of exploring ways to transform the Cape Metropolitan food system into one which is sustainable and secure.

A T-lab is a series of workshops gathering stakeholders from various spheres and backgrounds in order to imagine ways to shift a system in crisis.

By bringing together a diverse group of actors that are actively engaged in creating alternatives in the food industry (such as restaurateurs, chefs, producers, informal food traders, indigenous food foragers, food scientists and academics), the T-Lab seeks to create bridges and networks between people that would never otherwise have interacted.

A number of T-Labs have been conducted in order to empower and inform participants. Most recently, a T-Lab was held in Cape Town to explore the transformation of Coastal Wild Foods.

For more comprehensive information on T-Labs, download our latest report: T-Labs for Alternative Food Systems in the Western Cape.