Mike Meire: Global Street Food

The Serpentine Gallery/Sasparilla Summit/The future of Londons markets

I attended this informal summit at the Serpentine gallery as part of the Skills Exchange programme on the 13.01.10 which was set up by a resident artist Barbey to discuss and explore future of London street markets. I felt that this workshop would be of great use to me as one of markets are a hubbub of all things food related, closely entwined within a multitude of social narratives. The host and guests had laid on a beautiful banquet of food from surrounding street markets which was quite a surprise, pakoras and plantain fritters from Brixton, precarious jellied eels, homemade gingerbread, truffles, locally baked bread, chocolate fudge cakes, Cypriot olives amongst many other treats all beautifully illustrating the culinary and cultural diversity that exists within the area.

The space it self had investigatory maps of various markets, images and text adorning the walls from historical accounts of the markets to present users and inhabitants of the market. Additionally a speculative project was situated on the back wall across the floor, a series of architectural models constructed by a small architecture collective (Architecture Crew), exploring the potentials of what a market in the 21^st century should be and could potentially be, what purposes it should serve etc… as a piece of speculative design is was interesting to see.

The main premise was focused specifically on markets and their roles with society both historically through to the present day, discussing an array of challenges that they face in the 21^st century from the likes of councils, governments and other development initiatives. The exercise was people and society centric, how markets shape peoples lives, how life and communities are situated around these informal yet essential spaces and how time has stood to alter people perceptions. Within the workshop there were people from an varied backgrounds, varied disaplines but with a shared agenda, interest in markets and the maintaining and advocacy of such spaces in the climate of globalization and homgenisation.

Barbeys main area of interest was the East Street Market on the Walworth Rd, her main area of investigative exploration and artistic representation, who had explored the market through a number of different means, ethnographic research. I found most of the people present at the summit interesting due to their fascination with food and the environments in which it is purveyed. I think it would be appropriate for me to highlight in some detail the attendees of the summit abd their current positioning in relation to the debate, I will use bullet points to outline key points otherwise I will waffle on, it is also useful for my purposes to observe some of the strategies employed within their own practices for transference in to my own:

Barbey, artist, East Street Market

-       Decanting of estates

-       Conversations with market residents to discover memories, Salvation army, characters and myths

-       Organised walk around the market, memory guide, illustrated through a huge map on the wall. Families who once lived there, shady pasts, compromised integrity through price reduction

-       How can markets contribute to a community creatively

Alex Rhys Taylor, sociologist- PHD Goldsmiths

-       Alex is writing his PHD on the formation of communities around food, smells and flavors, whether positive of repugnance, beautifully rich, interesting stuff

-       Social relationships that form within this context

-       Market language, evolution and catalysts

Window farms

The farms themselves are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials. 


Window Farms. Another interesting design project within the midst of the movement to 'growing your own'. This particular initiative commenced life through helping people to grow some of their own food all year round in the windows of their apartments. The farms themselves are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials. 


The project has two main goals, the first is to start a window farming craze across the states, the second is to give ordinary folks a means to collaborate on research and development through their own site which is www.windowfarms.org.


The project has similar resonances to the plethora of other solutions that are currently evolving across the globe and they state that "growing some of own own food is a simple pleasure that can make a big difference in our relationship with nature. As we choose nutrients to feed plants we hope to eat in turn, we gain experience with a nearly lost fundamental human art, get a microcosmic view of the food system, develop a stake in the conversation, and come up with new ideas for how to take care of ourselves and our planet in troubled times. 


How it works
Each participant in the project makes it easier for the next window farmer to grow some of his/her own food. The system design and instruction sets evolve as each person comes up with ideas for improvements or points out problems we can collectively test solutions proposed by the group.


http://windowfarms.org/
http://our.windowfarms.org/

Loop.ph: Metabolicity

Loop.ph, a London based research and design studio that aims to bridge the gap between design and natural sciences. The project that is titled ‘Metabolicity’ and it focuses on a metabolizing of resources and waste to supply a cities inhabitants with all the nourishment they need. This project involves growing food in the city and they have seeded design projects within an array of environments from housing estates, to restaurants, offices and community centres. The projects aim is

“to raise large-scale awareness about the importance of localised food production and the reconnection with life sustaining practices”

Within the project as illustrated, through design and research they developed a system based on the microscopic connections bubbles make when they link to form adaptable structures that can be implemented within a number of urban environments, both indoor and outdoor, all capable of being utilised to grow food in and around the city.

http://loop.ph/bin/view/Loop/WebHome
http://www.metabolicity.com/

Pat Caplan: Food and Anthropology at Goldsmiths

Working my way through hordes of online material I stumbles across a project called: concepts of healthy eating (Lewisham) which was a series of ethnographic studies into the eating habits of inhabitants of Lewisham. A number of research methods were undertaken to amass a range of data sources, such as opened ended interviews, with a range of people and retail outlets, all ages, classes and ethnicities were considered and informants kept 7-day food diaries.
Some of the research methods employed within this study may in fact be advisable to utilise within my own areas of investigation.
The exercise painted an insightful picture into the varied diets of a boroughs diverse inhabitants, all of which were dictated by culture, social implications, finance, health afflictions, time, age, awareness of health information and that imbued by the mass media.
Anyway, the lady who undertook this research is in fact a professor of anthropology at Goldsmiths, it was she who set up the unit at the college. Pat has written extensively on matters relating to food in a number of global contexts so I have decided to make contact with her and run a few of my ideas past her.

http://www.gold.ac.uk/anthropology/staff/pat-caplan/project-uk-phase1/
http://www.gold.ac.uk/anthropology/staff/pat-caplan/food-health-identity/

Jamies Ministry of Food

The Ministry of Food

Another Oliver campaign: ‘The Ministry of Food centres on a similar subject but focuses on where I see my project grounded, within the realm of cooking, skills and education. Explored through a documentary TV series, Jamie visited the homes of a number of homes within council estates spanning the country. The series painted a powerful portrait of the socially excluded, it revealed an enduring truth “that our diet today is as much about class as it always has been and it will undoubtedly take more than this programme to change that. What it has done though is open the nations eyes to how certain social categories within society are nourished and how”.

“The programme it self was undisputedly a provocative piece of political documentary. In it or by accident Jamie had revealed the domestic life of a British town and captured a snapshot of a towns health. The result is an indictment to the current political system, as disturbing as any ideological tract, food and the real experience of it is all about class” (October 1^st 2008, The Guardian, Felicity Lawrence).

The programme revealed a dark side to the diets of some within certain areas of the country. In one case study he revealed one particular example, a female who fed her children takeaways on a daily basis, never having experienced a meal eaten at home. During the programme they sit on their living room floor, eating shavings of donner kebab with all its accoutrements out of polystyrene containers with their fingers, draws and cupboards are bulging with sweets, crisps and chocolate. Of her £80 benefit cheque, £70 goes on junk food, her children have already lost their teeth to decay. Despite her eight hob cooker, she just seems to have little idea what to do.

“Disciplined and well organised eating is interpreted as a reflection of general governance of life, just like a tidy home” (cf. Schmidt & Kristensen, 1986). The emphasis on ‘good’ eating is understandable because it indicates self-control and it is in this portrait that gruesomely the opposite is  highlighted. The notion of the limit separating the ‘pure’ from the ‘impure’ nature seems to be the focal point of many modern discourses of eating. The ‘pure’ represents either the culturally controlled or the unpolluted, non-artificial ideal type, whereas the ‘impure’ is either the uncontrolled or the culturally contaminated, depending on the discourse in question. The various difficulties in drawing this limit are manifested for instance in the vegan or living foods discourses of eating. This concept is in part, part of Claude Levi Strauss’s culinary triangle (quote fro his book) (http://www.sifo.no/files/makela_arppe.pdf)

Class, a topic that is frequently now avoided is the root of this dietary problem, one needs only to look at George Orwells documentary piece written in the 1930’s, The Road To Wigan Pier to see that Jamie Olivers findings are not too dissimilar from 70 years past.

… the English palate, especially the working class-palate, now rejects good food almost automatically. The number of people who prefer tinned peas and tinned fish to real peas and real fish must be increasing every year, and plenty of people who could afford real milk in their tea would much sooner have tinned milk… p.92

…The basis of their diet is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea and potatoes. Would it not be better if they spent more money of wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread?" Yes it would he answered, but "no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots ... A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita, an unemployed man doesn't ... When you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don't want to eat dull, wholesome food. You want something a little bit tasty. Let's have three pennorth of chips! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea!...

With these case studies in their plenty firmly Jamie embarked on an epic mission to attempt to lever these people from their current situations and introduce them to basic cooking techniques, which is essentially the crux of the programme and he does so through the design of a number of strategies. Many of the strategies employed within the programme are replicated as the title of the programme suggests from the Ministy of Food, set up during the Second World War with the purpose of educating the masses on ways to cook efficiently and be thrifty with the rations that they were supplied with. Jamie consequently devised a manifesto which highlighted the following points for implementation:

Manifesto:

Cooking ought to be taught to primary school children at school

Food centres to open up all over the country with professionally trained cooks to support them

Cooking skills to be taught to adults

Incentives for employers to teach cooking skills within the work place

He also asserts that government money should be used to do the following:

Set up a food centre in every town which should be staffed accordingly

Put cooks out in the community

Support businesses to pass it on

Invest in mobile food centres for deprived neighbourhoods

Promote cheap food with neighbourhoods

Fund adult cookery classes

Get kids cooking properly

Support the ministry of food

I have paid a lot of attention to Jamie’s campaigns as they are very of the moment and carry considerable clout, due to his sheer determinism aided by his nationwide and celebrity prowess. His campaigns bear the essence of what it is I would wish to achieve in my project. Taking people from marginalise settings and using food as power alleviate, enrich and manifest identity and pride to educate and inspire, many of the projects I have previously mentioned all achieve in fulfilling these aims. It is within these environments that interest and enterprise can make a difference but there of course a plethora of things that I need to be sensitive towards. 

http://www.jamieoliver.com/jamies-ministry-of-food/
http://www.jamieoliver.com/media/jamies-manifesto-171008.pdf

Here he is: Interview with Max Lamb

Max Lamb @ Yahoo! Video

Max Lambs ingenious use of materials constantly inspires me. I'm all emotional now!

Oh Maxy xx

Urban farming food project: Edible green wall project

This was a project set up in LA by a team of architects and local residents, a vertical farming system was devised by a series of specialists within the fields of agricultural technology and architects. The walls themselves are comprosed of edible food producing units growing fresh produce without the use of pesticides. The people who tend the gardens are entrusted to share a percentage of the crops with their neighbours. The food chain system implemented here offers locals in otherwise built up environments access to green vegetables and fruits. In additition to this though it greens the environment, creates team building and skills development and provides the opportunity for community service and involvement alongside have more practicle impacts within the built environment such as reducing the heat index and the obvious anti-global warming effects. There are many benefits to a project like this, reconnection with food, new skills and connecting with the community.

This is another project that has nuggets that could resonate within a project such as mine although I would perhaps like mine to have a slightly more commercial reverberations.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30074362@N08/

http://www.urbanfarming.org/foodchain2.htm

http://www.verticalfarm.com/

Vertical Farming and the social

For the Greener Good "Vertical Farming" from National Building Museum on Vimeo.

Dinners by Design... and the rest

Dinners by design. In the past few years a plethora of practical, domestic cookery workshop organisations have sprung up in huge numbers across the States that act as a platform for families or indicduals and friends to come and create a series of dinners for their following week or month, they can be created in a number of quantities and price packages.

It has been noted that the lack of time spent with family around the table and cooking has contributed to the crumbling of family strutures and other societal ills and ill formed characters, a whole host of literatre within yeras past has also contributed although it has been widely understood that frequent meals arounf the table, every so often at least bares vital powers in forming basic skills and abilities within people. So with the notable shift in power from family meals and home cooks, selecting ingredients to those of huge food processing conglomerates and grocers and supermarkets, along with GM, battery farming all conbusting at the same time this plethora of establishments have their feet formly set in the sand.

Anyway, as a concept, fantastic. The concept though it ought to be noted, has it benefits well documented throigh case studies and theory. I do wonder though how many families on the lower socio-econimic ladder partake in such enriching activities? Hmmm.

Anyway, packages, if not prepared in the establishments kitchens can be made in store and delivered with bespoke cooking methods applied, so you can oven/microwave or get slighly more skillfull and braise, fry, grill or whatever... I just want to point out a few other sites below that offer such services, but please be warned their websites are hideous!

http://www.dinnerbydesignkitchen.com/

http://www.dinnerworks.com/

http://www.healthycreations.com/

http://www.dinnertimemadeeasy.com/

http://www.preciousthyme.com/

Fifteen

The fundamental concept behind Fifteen was one of charitable cause. The concept was to take a series of disenfranchised people from impoverished environments and afford them an opportunity to invest in themselves though the medium of food and cooking, imbuing them with many of the layers that are analysed as being integral to satisfied existences in Maslows hierarchy of needs. The candidates, many of whom were unemployed or on the dole were extracted from their existing settings, and trained to become chefs, educated them over the course of a year, mentored by fantastically skilled and motivating chefs, nurtured but fundamentally given positive opportunity with the potential for a sense of accomplishment, something which most were missing.

The candidates were introduced to teamwork, camaraderie, hard work to create their own futures, a viable business. The programme also sought to act as a mediator to alleviate poverty and create opportunities that otherwise would be virtually obsolete. The programme illustrated detailed accounts of their progression, moments of strength and weakness. One could speculate though and suggest any form of apprenticeship, any form of craft would have displayed similar outcomes but `I beg to differ, food is such an integral and complex part of all our lives whether paid meticulous attention to or not, the cycle from nature to enjoyment.

http://www.fifteen.net/restaurants/fifteenlondon/news/Pages/Dec09-FifteenLondonopensforNewYear%27sEve.aspx

Duchess in Hull

Excuse me Duchess. I feel that I have painted a bad picture of the Duchess, it's just such an easy assumption to make but I apologise. I just want to refer to an earlier documentary that was filmed with the Duchess, in which she seeks to ween an obese family off their saturated daily diet. This is probably of more interest to me in terms of her aims, in relation to grub. So exactly as it says on the tin, her aims were simple. A dieter extrodonnaire in the State where she lives, she brough her expertese over to attmpt to educate the working class in Hull, it has to be done. This course of action, is obviously for the purpose of TV, but where else would it raise awareness to its cause on a natioal scale. Slight biaseness is of course going to occur, but the point is in my eyes she's done it, invested in it. Big brother as a slightly negatiove comparison could be made, think Eastenders and the purposes for people viewing.

http://www.itv.com/Lifestyle/Duchess/Duchesstodietguru/default.html

Concrete Impregnated fabric: Just add water

I don't think I need to provide too much information other than: Just add water

http://www.materialconnexion.com/Home/News/PressReleases/MEDIUMAwardforMaterialoftheYear/tabid/714/Default.aspx

http://www.concretecanvas.co.uk/

The Duchess on the estate ITV

I have posted this as it illustrates perfectly what I wish to avoid within my project. I have made a few hard but necessary decisions during the past few days about which direction I feel my project should veer. I have been thinking about the potential for the design of interventions, environments, infrastructures, systems that focus on food, cooking and growing within the realms of poorer, often neglected environments. Not necessarily estates but areas that are infested with social illness, perhaps paying particular interest to the disenfranchised youths that have limited avenues out of their current situations.

I feel a compulsion, an innate impulse to operate within this context,  it stems from a belief that enterprise, education, creativity and inspiration are key factors in elevating these socio groups from their particular current circumstances. Many disciplines could be regarded applicable in terms of a their process for elevation but personally, food is my penchant which as an area is vast and encompasses an array of factors from the practical side, cooking, preparation, organization, communication, management, self-discipline to the other factors, agriculture, provenance, sourcing, origin.

Already a thought of my own but more eloquently penned by Carolyn Steel in her book 'Hungry City', food generally speaking and the channels by which it travels logistically through the city have virtually all but vanished over time, simultaneously removing many of its benefits. These include visibility of food and systems informing decision making,  numerous social dynamics alongside the more sensoral qualities of touch and olfactory. My previous brief documentary, ‘Material Economies’ highlighted the issue that a large percentage of people have little idea about where what they eat comes from or how it is made, with a startling number believing Sainsbury’s actually manufacture in store.

Food, cooking and education has many documented benefits within society, it shapes attitudes, forms manners and attitudes to life, compare the Morelys chicken eater to the organic bean sprout shopper, both socio groups are imbued with deep seated traits over their food choices .

Having spent two weeks on the Doddington and Rollo council estate in Battersea, I feel that the potential for a food centered intervention is valid and could potentially be something that could be rolled out across the city, however it makes it self manifest.

One final point, with the council estate exercise, interviews with residents and shop keeps, children and adults revealed a somewhat sinister attitude the council housed towards the estate as a whole. Most of the estate 3 parks were closed permanently according to a number of residents, the lights around the estate were switched off the moment night descended in order to prevent the estates youths expending their energy constructively. Why?

What not to do…

In this documentary for ITV, the Duchess of York descended her royal prowess on to a housing estate in Manchester for 10 days to attempt to assess and potentially regenerate this example of 'Broken Britain'. Talks with residents, shop keepers, locals and people surrounding the estate were undertaken, and as expected, manipulated by the producers of this ITV documentary to conjure up an image not unlike the that portrayed in Shameless, the sitcom which is shot not too far from this location. The residents were understandably furious as is evident from the imagery and footage above. Fair enough though, £40,000 was raised and ploughed in to a 'prosaic' community centre, but in the grand scheme of the estate  of 66,000 people the efforts were acknowledged but deemed somewhat hollow. This is something I wish to avoid with my project; I want to implement something on a realistic scale that will have some impact. My target age group has been identified and so from now in I need to investigate realistic channels to further my quest.

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/theduchessontheestate/ep1wk34/default.html