Every two years or so the football is reinvented to coincide with a major soccer tournament. Yet we don't think anyone has thought about growing a football, from living cells, in a laboratory. Which is exactly what John O'Shea has achieved.

Working in collaboration with Liverpool University and the Wellcome Trust John has used skin culturing techniques to create a new biomaterial for assembling footballs. Skin culturing involves growing lots of cells in test tubes and petri dishes. It's a common procedure in many clinical engineering labs, and could be used to grow artificial organs in-vitro. The cells John used were harvested from discarded pigs bladders sourced from a local Liverpool abbatoir.

John will tour his bioengineered pig-cell football during Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival 2012. At last year's AND Festival John ran an organic pig's bladder football workshop where participants got hands on making footballs from actual pig's bladders. Bladders have been used since the first recorded football to provide the ball with its airtight inflatable core. The tissue cultured football bridges traditional hand-crafted techniques with present day biotechnology. It begs an interesting question: will the artisan appeal which drives many to handcrafted goods be incorporated into the bioengineered materials which will be part of our future?