Food Innovation Friday: Food, a language we all speak?

Discovering what Brixton tastes like with local residents, Bixton Splash 2011

My first month at the Innovation Unit coincided with my last month of study at Kingston University. I just finished my MA in Design for Development, a very new course, aimed at equipping designers with the knowledge necessary to apply their creative skills to social and environmental issues. Being French and obsessed with dining tables, I focused my final project on food.

Taking place in Brixton, it was an exploration of how local food systems can be used to engage culturally and socially diverse communities around sustainability issues. It has been conducted as an open-ended and entrepreneurial investigation into local food systems and social networks, focusing on Brixton Market. Inspired and supported by the genius People’s Kitchen, in Dalston, it aimed at uncovering opportunities to set up a community kitchen, which would address food waste, while being:

1. Inclusive: inviting broad community participation and ownership
2. Convivial: celebrating Brixton’s cultural diversity and facilitate sharing between participants.
3. Resourceful: joining up existing community groups, food surplus from Brixton market, local urban growing projects, and local cookery talents.

The People's Kitchen

WHY?

This project was motivated by the observation that most sustainability-minded projects seem to only engage “those who have reached a level of sufficient wealth and education to feel comfortable in letting go of some of it, who are often, but not always, white and middle-class.” (Hopkins 2010). However, to effect significant change, a vision for sustainable development must encompass the values and interests of everyone. This project was therefore framed by the need to find a language that includes diverse aspirations, and engages diverse communities around sustainability issues.

Eritrean cooking at Myatt's Fields Park Harvest Festival

WHY FOOD?

The underlying assumption of this project was that food is a language that can engage everyone. Everyone eats. And through what we eat, we send messages about our personal values, and our sense of identity. Food also play an important role in connecting people. It is a pretext to get families together or to maintain relationships. Finally, food is a huge cultural asset: we often access distant cultures through their cooking traditions, we learn foreign languages by learning the names of typical dishes. For all these reasons, food can be a trigger for conversation, and a touchpoint between diverse communities.

Discovering what Brixton tastes like with local residents, Bixton Splash 2011

HOW?

The short answer is: people. Trying to set up a community kitchen forced me to connect with local people already involved in sustainable food projects. This project has been shaped and nurtured by the encounters and conversations I had with them; they have given it its “Brixton seasoning”. This made me realise that, to be truly inclusive, community projects have to emerge from existing and evolving networks of people, and cooking is just one in many activities around which social networks are weaved. A delicious one.

For the long answer, come down to Kingston University’s MA Art Design & Architecture show! It’s open all weekend, in the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1 6QL: http://www.tentlondon.co.uk/events/kingston-university-faculty-art-design-architecture-ma-show-2011