We’re Stronger Together.
Catalyzing Cultural Change
We do food cultural work to change how we live, not just how we eat.
For the past decade, Food Culture Collective has been a place of convening dreaming, and creative troublemaking. This year we served up a feast of radical nourishment to grow our cultural capacity for social and climate justice.
PRACTICING LIBERATORY FOOD STORYTELLING
Together we hear a rumbling—liberatory stories of places, land, and belonging are already being told & tended.
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Our Story, Power, Place facilitation training and Story Dish story facilitation toolkit have brought together hundreds of participants to develop power-aware facilitation skills and practices within their existing communities. Because transforming culture and shifting power requires the capacity to really listen.
Social justice movements around the world have used story circles to build shared understanding of structural injustice and a way to surface priorities for change. We’ve taken this work on the road, hosting 50+ story circles with partnering arts, policy, food, and justice organizations such as the People’s Food and Farm Projectand the Hampshire County Food Policy Council.
2060+ Community Members Engaged through Workshops, Trainings & Food Justice Events
Attendees to our first-ever Joy Jam community festival gathered in September 2023 to experience local artist activations, immersive installations, pop-up food and culinary experiences, live music, and story at Pie Ranch in Pescadero, CA.
RESOURCING A COMMUNITY OF CREATIVE INSTIGATORS
"As a midwest creative who is learning how to be in more honorable relationship with the land, it has been powerful to hear from the stories and speakers curated by Food Culture Collective. I feel honored to have illustrated pieces of precious knowledge from Indigenous elders, land stewards, and creators of all backgrounds."
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Our artist partnership projects support creatives and food cultural workers working to reclaim and reimagine the food narratives that shape culture. We resource creatives to feed their curiosity, make with intention, and share their vision.
$76,000 in Fellowships + Commissions to Resource our Creative Community
18 Artist Collaborations
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Transform the Now Comics
Read our Transform the Now Comic made in partnership with Anjali Kamat and Shizue Roche Adachi
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Radical Nourishment Podcast
Listen to our limited audio series made by our inaugural class of Ears in the Field Fellows
Together, our creative collaborations received over 80,000 views!
View More of Our Past Creative Projects
FEEDING COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION FOR CULTURAL & CLIMATE RESILIENCE
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We embrace play and radical imagination to tackle the deeply embedded cultural norms and values that drive the cascading crises threatening our capacity to thrive. Our Food Futures Dream Labs gather people to root in joy, care, and mutual belonging as a first step towards breaking out of harmful cycles and creating an irresistible future.
14 Dream Labs Hosted
190+ Participants Engaged
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Technological advances will not save us from climate chaos if they’re not widely adopted. Policy change is a slow-moving fight. To catalyze the cascade of major shifts we need, it will take cultural transformation. Food Culture Collective’s public conversations, workshops, and creative play spaces engage with the emergent discussions in food culture to deepen a practice of care and accountability to our natural relations.
“I GO TO MY WATER CONSERVATION MEETINGS BRACING FOR IMPACT. AT THE DREAM LAB, IT WAS SO NICE TO BE ABLE TO STEP OUT OF THAT MINDSET AND DREAM ABOUT WHAT CAN BE, ESPECIALLY IF WE COLLECTIVELY ORGANIZE.”
—Caitlin Stuart, Dream Lab Participant
Choosing Hope Over Dystopia
Tune into this live conversation with climate-focused independent media organization, Grist, which brought together Food Culture Collective Co-Director, Ada Cuadrado-Medina and Tory Stephens, Climate Fiction Creative Manager to talk radical imagination and creative production as climate solutions.
GROWING NARRATIVE CAPACITY FOR TRANSFORMATION
“I think a lot about how narrative change work for me involves blocking narratives that are untrue and violent. The best block I can imagine is actual truth being shared by most impacted beings.”
—Kendra Graves, Food Futures Dream Lab Participant
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There’s growing interest in narrative strategy around food. At the same time, there’s confusion between narrative strategy that activates deep values and worldviews for cultural transformation, versus strategic messaging designed to further a particular idea (with or without attention to the deeper values). Some well-meaning efforts to increase food access or wellness even perpetuate white supremacist narratives.
Transforming food culture requires us to supplant insidious narratives of extraction and exploitation with liberatory narratives of food, land, and belonging. Our Dream Labs, workshops, and media offerings are rooted in an intentional narrative strategy designed to shift everyday behaviors and system-wide practices to support collective thriving.
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In a world awash with food buzzwords making empty promises for consumptive revolutions, Food Culture Collective s emerging Liberatory Food Narrative Project has begun developing a framework of food narratives to refocus food conversations for the next 25 years. Drawing from a decade of collaboration with food workers, culture bearers, and creatives of all kinds, the participatory research will map the narrative strategy transforming how we care for our land, waters, and communities.
Transforming food culture requires us to supplant insidious narratives of extraction and exploitation with liberatory narratives of food, land, and belonging. Our Dream Labs, workshops, and media offerings are rooted in an intentional narrative strategy designed to shift everyday behaviors and system-wide practices to support collective thriving.
COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP FOR COLLECTIVE THRIVING
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We seek to practice the collective, community rooted leadership we advance in our cultural work internally in how we work together. Community members have told us that experiencing this in our work has been healing and inspiring. We know that we are not alone in this commitment! We believe that the more we all make this commitment visible and foundational, the more it becomes common practice.Transforming food culture requires us to supplant insidious narratives of extraction and exploitation with liberatory narratives of food, land, and belonging. Our Dream Labs, workshops, and media offerings are rooted in an intentional narrative strategy designed to shift everyday behaviors and system-wide practices to support collective thriving.
Insights unearthed in our Around the Table series, a virtual program cooked up during the height of the pandemic to gather with food workers, thought leaders, elders, organizers, and creatives to dig into emergent insights in food culture. Art by Sara Yukimoto-Saltman and Cori Nakamura Lin.
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Although they are not (yet) reflected in dominant narratives about food, the liberatory stories advanced by grassroots food culture makers are profound. They offer both healing and a vision for transformation that have implications for climate, social policy, land use, economic models, community care initiatives, and more.
This year we collaborated with a diverse coalition of organizations to support a cultural approach to food justice work.
Artwork by Nai'a Lewis from our Kinship with Water virtual series, hosted in partnership with Collective Acceleration to deepen our practice and relationship with water and inspire collective strategies and actions toward protecting and nourishing our water in and outside of our homeplaces.
BUILDING MOMENTUM THROUGH CREATIVE COURAGE
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Facing escalating crises and a culture of perpetual burnout, people return to Food Culture Collective as a site of nourishment and support. Some might call us a cultural and creative incubator, but we prefer to think of ourselves as seed savers. These seeds of vision and transformative stories that interrupt a status quo are carried into daily practices and creative works.
