We are very excited to announce our latest project “Posters to Plates: Investigating the role of visual communication in students’ meal choices”
Posters to Plates is a project that is using creative ways of engaging with school students to better understand their meal choices at school. Students aged 11-16 are a demographic that continues to eat too much saturated fat and sugar and not enough fruit and vegetables. Our aim is to research what interventions could be made to increase more nutritious and sustainable food choices in students.
Novel Research Approach
Visual focus groups are a novel approach created by Kaleidoscope to enable a deeper understanding of consumer thoughts on a given topic by not only encouraging discussion but using drawings and visuals to enhance that discussion. Visuals are a great way for people to communicate their otherwise hard to express feelings towards a topic. They also provide a low stakes approach to research that enables more diverse voices to participate and influence outputs.
This is the perfect approach to finding out what students think of the food and sustainability as it encourages collaboration and enables the ‘youth voice’ to emerge in discussions. The creative element of visual focus groups breaks down barriers that can be present between the researcher and the participant in more traditional research settings.
Impact on Sustainable Choices
The rich discussions and visual creations from the visual focus groups will be used to inform the design of posters that will be displayed in the school eating areas for students to see. By improving the way that meal choices with a lower carbon footprint are communicated, the intention is that students will be encouraged to choose the more sustainable options.
Findings of the project will also inform school menu development supporting behavioural change in meal choices by making available more sustainable options.
We are aiming for these insights to not only be applicable across schools but also to be used as an example for applications in business settings across the wider public and private sectors. Understanding the visuals that consumers most associate with sustainability provides both a unique and also robust insight that can positively inform the development of products, packaging and marketing.
Posters to Plates has been made possible through funding from the AFN Network+ FlexFund:
Join the AFN Network+ and connect with professionals who are also passionate about transforming the UK agri-food landscape to achieve net zero today! Follow the QR code:
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