On October 11 and 18, two design thinking workshops will be held at the premises of Sofia Lab, Sofia Development Association to bring together various stakeholders into a co-creation process for “Do it yourself” (DIY) vertical garden kits. The first workshop is set to elaborate the kit’s concept, and the second, to build up the prototype of a DIY vertical garden kit.

The design workshops are organized by the Applied Research and Communications Fund and the Sofia Development Association within the CityZen’s project pilot action on testing the co-creation values of urban farming innovations facilitated by the Sofia Municipality and its SOfia Green programme.

Public authorities, students, agronomists, entrepreneurs, designers, architects, marketing experts and urban farmers will be involved in a co-creation design thinking to elaborate on the DIY vertical garden kits. Main criteria for the DIY kit’s creation are: lean design by using inexpensive and recycled materials, water management features, attractive and versatile look, easy-to-build indoor and outdoor structure and knowledge transfer values. In the end, the project’s team will provide guidelines for the future kit’s users as an ‘open source’ innovation.

The CityZen project aims to promote urban agriculture among policy makers as a successful driving force for economic and social change and the pilot action is a step forward toward mobilizing local community for UF innovation actions and applied activities.

CityZen Notebook (in Bulgarian) to guide the design thinking workshops for prototyping DIY mini vertical gardens models.