Urban Mushroom Farm 

During the exhibition Food: Bigger than the Plate, we grew oyster mushrooms in the gallery using a substrate of spent coffee grounds from the nearby V&A cafe, where visitors consume over 1000 cups of coffee a day. When they fruited, the mushrooms were harvested and returned to the cafe as ingredients, closing the nutrient loop.

Coffee grounds are rich in nutrients, but most end up in landfill. Using them to grow mushrooms is a small but smart step towards farming in the concrete jungle, taking waste from cities that are overflowing with coffee, but where soil is thin on the ground. The installation intervened in the museum’s own cycles of consumption and waste to show urban farming and the circular economy in action.