Nuffield Theatre
Atomic Gardening
Nuffield Theatre University Road, Southampton, SO17 1TR, UK
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A 20 minute TEDx talk for the University of Southampton, curated by James Dyke. The theme of the day is ‘flourishing in the 21st century‘:
I’ll be digging into British allotments and archives to reveal the little known story of the 1950s atomic gardening movement. In this early example of crowdsourcing and citizen science, atomic visionary and sci-fi writer Muriel Howorth led hundreds of amateur experimenters in a quest to grow a giant mutant vegetable to end world hunger. Fifty years on, I’ll assess Howorth’s unbridled technoutopianism and ask what today’s problem solvers can learn from Howorth today.
This research will also be presented in a one-hour podcast on Resonance FM, 8pm March 21 2013.