Glitch: Planting the Cyborg City is a hands-on workshop exploring how digital technology, people and more-than-human life can work together to shape greener cities.

‍

Beginning with a short introduction to Glitch, a nature-tech platform for growing, mapping biodiversity and reimagining urban space, the workshop introduces the idea of the cyborg city: a city in which digital systems and living systems are not treated as separate infrastructures, but can work together to help people understand, care for and actively shape the places around them.

‍

Participants will then move from screen to soil.

‍

Working in small groups, they will use the chatbug as co-design tools, alongside drawing, mapping, seeds, plants and modelling materials, to imagine what a particular garden or growing space could become.

‍

The exercise asks participants to design with the site considering human needs alongside sunlight, soil, water, insects, plants, pollinators and other species.

‍

The group will then collectively plant the glitch garden at Softer, turning the digital and speculative design process into a physical intervention.

‍

The workshop explores digital tools as a form of placemaking and asks:

What happens when designing a cyborg city becomes a conversation between people, technology and the living world?

‍