Erasmus University Rotterdam
A taste of sustainability
The university set ambitious goals for becoming more sustainable. It was my task to create awareness, which we did by focusing on the campus garden.
1 Strategy
How can we make sustainability tangible?
The first step was looking at the various aspects of EUR sustainability and identifying ways to make it less abstract.
a) Creating an overview
To help people understand what the university is doing and how they could join we decided to create an interactive way to explore the sustainability strategy.
b) Campus garden
The garden should not just be a way to grow food on campus, but a medium through which people come into touch with where their food comes from.
It would be a hands-on balance to the intellectual life of a university; a way to touch, smell, and taste sustainability.
2 Content design
Creating an overview
The strategic sustainability goals of the university centre around education, research and campus facilities. By naming it more active with 'study, research, live' the strategy becomes more personal.
The other aspect is translating the strategy into a clear visual layout. People can navigate the three pillars and see the different programmes, classes and roadmaps for each area.
Website
3 PR & video
Reaching people with storytelling
To get attention from media outlets you need a good story and every good story has a character. That is why we focused on Bob ter Haar and his story from secretly planting vegetables to managing the official campus garden.
Press release
Various outlets reported about the opening, including one of the biggest Dutch newspapers.
Promo video
A short video to promote the opening event and highlight the joy of gardening and directly eating the produce.
Social media
We briefed the social media team of the university to ask students about the garden with questions like 'How do Brussels sprouts grow?'
4 Event & PR
Official opening of the garden
To further create awareness around the garden we decided to organise an official event to celebrate its opening. It would include multiple stakeholders like Erasmus Food Lab, Sustainability Hub, Edible EUR and the executive board of the university.
Interactive quiz
The event started with a quiz that people could answer on their mobile phones. The questions were designed to stimulate curiosity about the ecosystem of the garden.
Photography
One of the photo moments we created was a member of the board planting a tree because it bridges the two worlds of intellectual academics and hands-on sustainability.
