”Welcome to a Dinner Party. As a guest, you are invited to create a dish with homemade play-dough (coloured with Australian seasonal vegetable ink: beetroot, onion and spinach). For your dish, you have the freedom to pick any ingredient(s). When you are done, place your dish on the dinner table. Then, mingle with other guests and share your dish with them!

Hold on – photo first!

This dinner party, hosted by Yi Jing Ang, is a reimagined participatory design workshop positioned from a non-Western centric perspective. The guests are design students from different disciplines and cultural background. In consideration of different customs and traditions, the party instead positioned food as a medium and language to explore the concept “designers are not culturally or politically neutral”. As shown, the party was a great success as the guests each made and brought a dish representative of themselves. The gathering wrapped up with the guests’ personal anecdotes of the dishes before everyone leaves for the night.