Immersing consumers in the story behind their choices (Dr Ben Neimark)
Vanilla Exhibit during construction at Eden Project, Cornwall
Everyday shopping decisions can make the difference between life or death in upstream commodity chains. But does knowledge of how our purchases are produced actually change our behaviour? A partnership between the Lancaster Environment Centre and the Eden Project, enabled by an ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), may help to find out.
“Who doesn’t eat ice cream or use the thousands of products vanilla makes its way into, from cleaning products to perfumes?” says Dr Ben Neimark, a senior lecturer in human geography who built on years of research in Madagascar to set up the project. “What we cannot do is lose sight of the production aspects. So the idea was to reconnect consumers with their product. Eden was the ideal space to bring the research back home and make it impactful.”
It is an incredible story, as Ben illustrates. “High value commodities, particularly food commodities, are subject to significant price fluctuations, which have a significant impact on the smallholders. Roughly five years ago, the price of vanilla spiked so much it was equal to silver. That led to people sleeping in their fields to guard against theft, communities pitted against one another… In a way, your choice of ice cream became a life-or-death decision.”
Ben aimed to tell this story and collect the general public’s reaction to it. He approached the Eden Project in Cornwall with a view to creating an exhibit that would immerse and engage visitors. The availability of adequate funding through the IAA made this a mutually attractive proposition from the start.
“We were looking for a showcase exhibit in a high-footfall area of our Rainforest Biome,” says Sarah Peake, Eden’s Content Curation Manager. “The fact that Ben’s research touched on so many interesting parts of the story – the complexity of growing vanilla, the social impact it has – meant we could use it as an exemplar to communicate all the issues around how we can make sustainable choices as consumers. And because we had that funding, we could go to town on the exhibit.”
Working closely with Ben, the Eden Project’s design and horticultural teams developed an exhibit to interpret the story. The key feature would be a pergola with vanilla orchids growing over the pathway, creating a sensory experience supported by authentic artefacts and sounds obtained from Madagascar’s vanilla-growing areas.
The new vanilla exhibit opened to the public in mid-May 2021 and is likely to be in place for several years. “It has really heightened the experience of the Rainforest Biome – it’s a story that makes it real for people.” Sarah explains that the exhibit emphasises how the project was developed with actual researchers out in the field. “Having it underpinned by an academic, by a university, that really goes a long way with our visitors. It helps amplify what we do and the integrity of what we do.”
Claire Sandercock is Eden’s Head of Insight. She describes how they capture visitor feedback to gauge impact. “For the vanilla exhibit, we were fortunate to have the funding to do an in-depth qualitative analysis. We took a new approach, using an ethnographic methodology and a mobile app, which was a safe way to do the research in Covid times. We set people tasks, including taking photographs of what really grabbed them. And most of our participants took the same image. It was the signage where we communicate the message that each flower blooms once a year, only lives for a day, and must be hand-pollinated. That really brought home to people how labour-intensive it was.”
Another stand-out finding, Claire says, was the idea of consumers having agency. “The majority of our respondents told us they were going to be more aware of the brands they were buying and make a conscious effort to consider Fair Trade. A quote from one participant was ‘It does matter what we do’. To get that impact and have that communicated to us was awesome!”
As Ben says, the IAA has already gone a long way. “I can’t say enough about how helpful these somewhat smaller but much more flexible grants are, to administer, to work through, to get things done. An incredible amount of good, high-quality science can get done like this. Having the flexibility and control to make decisions on the spot – and having it administered internally by the team at Lancaster – was invaluable for getting the exhibit up and running.”
Although the IAA-funded element of the project has now been completed, the vanilla exhibit is very much still open, engaging and informing over one million visitors a year, generating continued media attention – and leaving exciting potential for further partnership and wider research into consumer behaviour.