Ferment Lab is an initiative exploring intertwines of food fermentation and winter urban farming as a means for activating local neighbourhoods. Ferment Lab in collaboration with Hertsikan Pumppu invites for two events: fermentation workshops (22 and 23 September) and brainstorming (26 September) on a collectively powered greenhouse module prototype which Pixelache works for almost a year.

Ferment Lab workshops are participatory hands-on tutorials dealing with sustainability of preservative food processing through fermentation, a chemical alteration that transforms nutritious substances into simpler, more easily digestible compounds provided by microorganisms like yeast or bacteria. In the frame of the Ferment Lab workshop vol. 2 publicly growing plants collected during Urban Foraging Ride are going to be carefully prepared for fermentation processes which will occur during the following days of the festival. Food fermentation is a time based development: the results of it will be tasted three days later during Ferment Lab brainstorming event.

Sceptics should know that fermented plants can be safer than raw plants, primarily because the fermentation process kills harmful bacteria. Moreover fermentation is used as a food preservation method for making it more digestible, more nutritious and disease protective in different cultures around the world since thousands of years. To participate in the workshop no prior knowledge of fermentation or cooking is needed.