What

Food-Connect is a social initiative set up by myself. Its purpose is to promote cultural sharing in diverse communities through the communities own food stories. I have devised a scalable model that can be applied in various ways.

It was set up as a result of my MAAI self-initiated research study, which I embarked on after my ‘unpacking’ in year one of MAAI. I had three elements in life in which I was skilled and that excited my curiosity: a passion for food, world cultures, and the need to record memories before they are lost. I loosely utilised Edward de Bono’s theory of lateral thinking and put these words together. I wanted to explore where the intersections of the word’s food, culture and storytelling would take me.

It all started when…

I have often sat in the cramped carriage of the underground and looked around at the faces from the world wandering what their story is. Never imagining that I would ever know. I have always known that around food, conversations take place. It seems to provide a forum for sharing, be it I the late hours when dining with friends or the preparation of a meal. I also had another route of enquiry and that was with International students at CSM. I followed these two streams of enquiry, which was a challenge as they were very different and had different requirements, but I never reached a stage where there was a natural point to drop one.  

It is in the last few weeks of my project that I have seen the final shift to my question. It has gone through many changes starting as ‘an enquiry into the use of food and spice to get stories’. Then looking at ‘how food, culture and storytelling can be utilised to break down barriers to promote cultural sharing’. To now, ‘why a study into the use of food as a conduit for cultural sharing benefits communities? In just the last week I have been approached by two main stakeholders for consultation on my knowledge to collaborate on community projects which will take part next year. I have applied my workshop in an International student group to get communication flowing to solve a genuine problem. Seeing that the new knowledge has value and is being applied to real life contexts evidences its importance and need for this study.