This post was written by Harry Heyworth (3rd Year Arts) who was the 2018 recipient of the Cam Brown Community Innovation Fund.

The Cameron Brown Community Innovation Fund (CBCIF) was set-up in memory of the Wyvern Cameron Brown in aid of promoting and cultivating three values that were held closely to his heart: community benefit, innovation and sustainability. Entwined throughout all of these, however, Cameron had the urge to inspire others to think big.

This last cornerstone was conveyed outstandingly during the CBCIF informational panel held for current Queeners earlier this year. A group of fantastic Wyverns not only told stories of their entrepreneurial experiences but did so in a way that made even the hardest ideas seem achievable. For myself, that one-hour talk was the tipping point that made me start pursuing my vision of getting Melbournians, and Australians as a whole, to start eating insects.

My name is Harry Heyworth and I am extremely honoured to be writing this as the 2018 recipient of the CBCIF. At the beginning of this year, I started researching the ins and outs of entomophagy – the consumption of edible insects.

The multi-faceted benefits quickly became evident: not only is it an incredibly nutritious, delicious and risk-free food source, but it is also far more efficient in land use, water consumption and greenhouse gas emission as compared to traditional livestock (refer image below). With this knowledge, combined with the understanding that current food-consumption habits will be unachievable by 2050, a mission started to materialise: remove the socially-generated “yuck factor” associated with eating insects.

The ways in which we are striving to achieve this goal are varied. Structured as a business, we are looking to learn from previous shifts in food-consumption behaviour – an example being the rapid increase in consumption of raw fish in sushi – and apply these learnings to our project. From this, we intend to start testing as many product and marketing variations as can be fathomed, until we create a meal that is welcomed by the average Aussie.

Simultaneously, I am trying to get as much advice as possible from anyone and everyone. So, if you are at all interested in the project and want to learn more/get involved, or if you suddenly have a light-bulb moment wherein you discover the perfect way to sell “yummy-crawlies”, or indeed just have some advice that you could impart to us, then please do email me at harryheyworth@aol.com – this brief summary barely even touches the surface of all that can be said on the subject.

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