One day in early October, as I was quietly wandering along, minding my own business, I was accosted by a lady from the graduate school. ‘Ah, the very person I was looking for!’ She said.
My heart sank, ever since I foolishly showed up for a number of training sessions during the first year of my PhD the graduate school have seen me as a reliable person to participate in things, a bad reputation to have!
It seemed she was looking for volunteers to take part in the graduate school’s second annual, ‘Bake your Research Competition’ where you create baked goods, along with an abstract that communicates your research to a non specialist audience.
I prevaricated saying I thought it sounded interesting but was really rather busy at the moment trying to launch a survey and, more importantly, rustle up some responses to it, so might not have time, when would it be?
She told me the date and I breathed a silent sigh of relief, ‘I’m sorry I’ll be working in Cumbria that week so won’t be on campus.’ I said regretfully.
Unfortunately though it seemed that being helpful people, they were running a distance competition as well! All I had to do was send in some photos of my bake and an abstract.
Seeing no escape I said I’d think about it, which was interpreted as a yes, then went back to the office to do some planning…
My research is on sensitively reducing carbon emissions from residential heritage buildings in Cumbria, so my immediate thought was that a heritage house was required. When thinking about houses and baking what instantly comes to mind? Gingerbread or course!
I then came up with a cunning plan. In Grasmere in Cumbria there is a place called the Gingerbread Shop, they make Sarah Nelson’s world famous ‘Grasmere Gingerbread’ (non genuine without trademark!) to a secret recipe handed down since Victorian times.
It was perfect for my research which amongst other things is investigating the benefits of traditional and local materials on carbon footprints and heritage values. Therefore Grasmere gingerbread it was to be.
The week before the competition I therefore bought about 30 pieces of gingerbread, and a range of other important materials. Then on the Sunday evening before the competition I set to work. Windows were cut into the gingerbread, crushed sweets added and gently warmed to create the single glazing, the walls were assembled and supported by their marzipan foundations and the liquorice crucks and cinnamon stick purlins were inserted to hold up the roof. Once the basic structure was set up the decoration began, I iced on window frames and doors, and did some landscaping in the garden, including a dry stone wall made of grey icing masquerading as slate.
So the heritage aspect of the building was completed, but how to demonstrate the carbon reduction aspects of the research in a visible and instantly recognisable form? After some thought in the planning phase, I had decided to go with the simple solution and add some renewable technologies to the house as well as some building materials to demonstrate the importance of thermal improvements to the building fabric.
I duly added solar panels, both photovoltaic and solar thermal – silver edible paint, liquorice and clear gems- candy-floss loft insulation and a strawberry lace ground source heat pump in the garden. Sadly however I found that the liquorice wind turbine wouldn’t support its own weight. Still the general effect looked good.
Unfortunately the changes were not necessarily what I would call retrofits sensitive to the buildings heritage values… But I decided a virtue could be made of this necessity and added an open question to the abstract about whether readers thought the changes were sensitive or not.
The other challenge was that I’m also researching people’s energy behaviours in their heritage buildings but how can you show behaviour is static cake form? I decided that a playmobil heritage building resident standing outside his building and a torch inserted inside to light up the windows would provide enough of an impression of the role of people to suggest this aspect.
Having spent a month with the concept bobbing around in the back of my mind and then having made the house itself, I found that when I came to writing the abstract it was remarkably quick and straightforward because I was already quite clear in my own mind about what I wanted to say.
Once the house was complete I carefully photographed it in my makeshift photo studio (a neutral linen table cloth spread over the table in the garden room with a carefully positioned spotlight), and sent the photos and abstract in.
I was very pleased a few days later to be informed that my Heritage Gingerbread House had won the Distant Star Baker category meaning that all my efforts were worth it! I even got an appearance on Student Hub Live out of it as a couple of the winners were asked to talk about our bakes for their induction day in January.
All in all it was a fairly fun experience and was also surprisingly useful in terms of thinking about communicating my research in what could be called a novel and non-traditional medium. So thank you for to the Graduate School for volunteering me to take part!
If you are interested you can read the abstract here: Gingerbread abstract and watch the appearance on Student Hub Live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCO1iB4t7Cs&feature=emb_title and finally should you wish to read the interesting history of Grasmere gingerbread (or even buy some!) the link is here: https://www.grasmeregingerbread.co.uk/history/
Freya Wise
For more information about my research please see:
http://www.open.ac.uk/research/people/fw939
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