“We used the meatball’s shape and size as a canvas for future foods scenarios, because we wanted to visualise complicated research in a simple, fun and familiar way. There’s hardly any culture that does not cook meatballs – from the Swedish meatball, to Italian/American spaghetti meatballs to spiced up Middle Eastern kofta,” says Kaave Pour from Space10.

Like it or not, meat-eating and our increasing demand for food is becoming a problem for everyone on the planet. Our meat production is impacting global warming significantly, uses dwindling supplies of fresh water, destroys forests and grasslands, and causes soil erosion, while pollution and animal waste create dead zones in coastal areas and smother coral reefs. In addition to this, our demand for food will increase with 70% within the next 35 years according to the UN. We need to be smarter and more efficient about the way we produce our food and be more open minded about food diversity, as our global population grows and climate change cuts into the water and land that’s available for farming.

“It’s quite difficult to picture that in the near future we will be eating insects or artificial meat. But, with the increasing demand for food, we need to start considering adding alternative ingredients to our daily menu. You could say that Tomorrow’s Meatball gets people a little more familiar with the unfamiliar.” – says Bas van de Poel, who was creative in residence at Space10, where he worked closely together with Space10-creative Kaave Pour to create the Tomorrow’s Meatball project.