SOUTHWARK PARK GALLERIES PUBLIC PROGRAMME
“We cannot meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without re-story-ation”
– Robin Wall-Kimmerer
For us to share explores ideas of home via food, spice, and the in-between space of translation with students from the Bosco Centre in Rotherhithe. The group all called Southwark home at the time of the workshops, including refugees, migrants, asylum seekers and local residents. They came together to share stories, recipes and food. Working with artist Saima Rasheed and mother tongues a local and global multidisciplinary collective, over four workshops, they explored local history archives at John Harvard Library in Southwark, painted with herbs and spices and translated their own recipes of home through multiple forms of media to create a visual recipe book that brings many different cultures into one place. The book was launched at Southwark Park Galleries on Saturday 7th May in a recipe sharing that acted as a call and response from one community to another.
This project was conceived and delivered at a moment when migration and community displacement was on the rise with policies demeaning those who travel to the UK for a better life becoming ever more severe. Situated in and responding to current global affairs, For us, to share sought to celebrate the many similarities and differences found in culture, memory and language. Ultimately, the group’s lived experience is a microcosm of what is happening on a global scale.
The memory of their own food or their favourite meals became the translation. Transcending language barriers, everybody was able to communicate through their own recipes and visuals. Reclaiming the stickiness of communication through acts of painting, collaging, eating and drawing.
For us, to share is constant, the project can continue to develop with your contribution. Food is a tangible history passed through hands and oceans; this book is a message to the relationship we all have with places and people.
The students, artists and curators have given permission for their stories and recipes to be shared. We encouraged participants at the sharing to add their own recipes and continue to share this book, enabling their food to travel beyond your home.
The book can be found at The British Library, Canada Water Library, Camberwell Library, Walworth Library and currently in exhibition Southwark Today at Southwark Heritage Centre from 6 June 2022 until June 2023, curated by Syrup.
The digital PDF can be found here
Recipe book design by Jennifer Whitworth
Printed by ME PRINT