‘Together We Prepare a Feast, Each Person Stirring Up Memory’

Ed Stevens; Anna Khlusova; Sarah Fine; Ammar Azzouz; Leonie Ansems de Vries

doi:10.3390/h12050098

‘Together We Prepare a Feast, Each Person Stirring Up Memory’

Ed Stevens^*, Anna Khlusova^*, Sarah Fine, Ammar Azzouz, Leonie Ansems de Vries

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Our story starts in April 2020, in the early stages of the UK’s first national COVID-19 lockdown. A multidisciplinary team of researchers and artists began a collaboration with Migrateful, a charity that runs cookery classes led by refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants struggling to integrate and access employment. Teaching classes and sharing their cuisine and stories helps the chefs develop their confidence and sense of belonging, and food is central to the enterprise. The focus of the project was a series of interactive online cookery classes delivered by Migrateful chefs, with ongoing involvement from the researchers and artists. In this paper, we weave together the research team’s reflections on the project with commentary from the participants and artists. We outline our methods and our learning from the collaboration and explain how it inspired new ways of thinking about refugee representation, food and belonging, co-creative storytelling, and virtual engagement. We discuss the ways in which Migrateful’s model helps to support the production of counter-narratives that value, foreground, and amplify migrants’ perspectives and voices while acknowledging the tensions involved in adapting this model to the virtual space. We emphasise the power dynamics inherent in engaging and researching with marginalised people and their stories while considering whether artistic involvement and creation may help to navigate some of these challenges, and we address how the virtual environment affected the potential for collaborative storytelling, interaction, and engagement levels among participants. Together, these reflections form a ‘recipe’ for what we hope to be a more meaningful and ethical model of engagement activity that builds on this learning.

Original language	English
Article number	98
Journal	Humanities (Switzerland)
Volume	12
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3390/h12050098
Publication status	Published - 15 Sept 2023

Keywords

affective storytelling
art
belonging
COVID-19
food
integration
migration
power
refugees
virtual engagement

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.3390/h12050098Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "{\textquoteleft}Together We Prepare a Feast, Each Person Stirring Up Memory{\textquoteright}",

abstract = "Our story starts in April 2020, in the early stages of the UK{\textquoteright}s first national COVID-19 lockdown. A multidisciplinary team of researchers and artists began a collaboration with Migrateful, a charity that runs cookery classes led by refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants struggling to integrate and access employment. Teaching classes and sharing their cuisine and stories helps the chefs develop their confidence and sense of belonging, and food is central to the enterprise. The focus of the project was a series of interactive online cookery classes delivered by Migrateful chefs, with ongoing involvement from the researchers and artists. In this paper, we weave together the research team{\textquoteright}s reflections on the project with commentary from the participants and artists. We outline our methods and our learning from the collaboration and explain how it inspired new ways of thinking about refugee representation, food and belonging, co-creative storytelling, and virtual engagement. We discuss the ways in which Migrateful{\textquoteright}s model helps to support the production of counter-narratives that value, foreground, and amplify migrants{\textquoteright} perspectives and voices while acknowledging the tensions involved in adapting this model to the virtual space. We emphasise the power dynamics inherent in engaging and researching with marginalised people and their stories while considering whether artistic involvement and creation may help to navigate some of these challenges, and we address how the virtual environment affected the potential for collaborative storytelling, interaction, and engagement levels among participants. Together, these reflections form a {\textquoteleft}recipe{\textquoteright} for what we hope to be a more meaningful and ethical model of engagement activity that builds on this learning.",

keywords = "affective storytelling, art, belonging, COVID-19, food, integration, migration, power, refugees, virtual engagement",

author = "Ed Stevens and Anna Khlusova and Sarah Fine and Ammar Azzouz and {Ansems de Vries}, Leonie",

note = "Funding Information: This project received internal funding from King{\textquoteright}s College London and Arup. Sarah Fine would like to acknowledge the support of the Good Integration project, The Research Council of Norway, 313846. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 by the authors.",

year = "2023",

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AU - Ansems de Vries, Leonie

N1 - Funding Information: This project received internal funding from King’s College London and Arup. Sarah Fine would like to acknowledge the support of the Good Integration project, The Research Council of Norway, 313846. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.

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ER -

‘Together We Prepare a Feast, Each Person Stirring Up Memory’

Abstract

Keywords

UN SDGs

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