The Culinary Arts curation by The Locavore at Serendipity Arts Festival, 2023, encourages you to explore your relationship with the world of food. Through the medium of art and learning, we wish to implore—what and how do we eat, and what does this say about us?
Last year, around 1.5 lakh people gathered in Panjim, Goa, to attend the Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF). A large number, of course, but not surprising. When an initiative brings together the multiple disciplines of art—visual, performative, culinary, film, literature—with care and accessibility, it is bound to be met with immense enthusiasm.
This year, we at The Locavore are proud to be a part of this initiative and push forth our message of ‘Doing Good Through Food’ by fostering community engagement and dialogues around sustainability. Curating the Culinary Arts segment, our goal is to rekindle the relationship between people and the food they consume, centering the stories and lives of local food producers, culinary traditions, lesser known recipes, and forgotten heritages.
Having connected with artists, producers, and chefs from all over the country, our curation this year highlights unique narratives from the people best equipped to tell them, and spreads across all the days of the festival from 15th to 23rd December 2023. This includes compelling food documentaries from rural India, hands-on workshops spanning permaculture and Indian dairy traditions, and a distinct recreation of pre-metal age Feni distillation.
Expect collaborative sessions interweaving food with creative expression such as zine-making and poetry, along with a wide variety of delicious fare, ranging from traditional Goan cuisine to innovative millet-based dishes. Through each activity, workshop, walk, installation, and dish, we invite participants to experience diverse flavours and culinary heritage.
If you wish to be a part of our curation for SAF 2023, find all the details at the bottom of this page.
We eat everyday, but how often do we really think about our food?
The food on our plates holds a multitude of stories. Of those who grew it, those who cooked it, where the dish came from and how it’s changed over time, and implicitly, all the waste—the peels, bones, burnt bits—that didn’t make it to the plate at all. The Locavore’s Culinary Arts curation aims to bring these hidden stories to the forefront.
In an effort to bring to notice fading culinary cultures, traditions, and recipes, our curation speaks of food heritage— that which is lost, and which remains. Workshops such as Ghee and Our Ancestral Bond, Paneer and the Origins of Indian Cheese, and Dairy Traditions: Echoes of Colonisation and Migration by Chef Aditya Raghavan, or Archiving Family Food Traditions and Recipes by Archana Pidathala capture the complex histories of everyday foods that we know little about.
Examining the past is both a personal and collective endeavour. Practising art lends itself generously to thinking and feeling about our personal memories of food as well as our culinary identity. Zine-making workshops by the Zinedabaad Collective, and A Longing for Home Food Booth, through the audio and visual, implore us to remember our journeys with food, and how much of our experiences inform our relationship with food today.
The Locavore Shuffle, in which participants engage in spontaneous conversations guided by prompts drawn from paper chits, alongside poetry workshops and storytelling sessions, encourage us to listen to and engage with others’ journeys, and their idiosyncratic, complicated, yet not entirely distinct bond with food.
Given that this festival will take place in Goa, we felt that our curation should at least in part lean towards the state’s culinary heritage. With a hands-on Traditional Goan Cooking Workshop and food stall by The Goan Kitchen, sessions of Goan Vinegar Tasting and Feni Appreciation by Hansel Vaz, and a whole lot more, and we hope to invite people to connect with the region and its food.
The Goan Village at the Art Park promises to be an immersive experience bringing the various facets of rural Goan food and agricultural traditions as well as its unique crafts to the festival, in an exciting collaborative project between The Locavore, Goa Livelihoods Forum, and Indian Institute Of Art and Design (IIAD). From the Kunbis to the Gaud Saraswat Brahmins, we hope to bring out the diversity of Goan communities through a community kitchen, a farmer’s market, and live demonstrations of traditional techniques and crafts. It highlights what The Locavore has been learning since its inception: there’s no talking about food, collective memories, and cultural heritage without talking about community.
Simultaneously, there’s no scope to address any of these ideas without hearing from those who grow our food. The Gardening for Kids workshop by Mohnish Lahir of Tattva Permaculture, food documentaries produced by Samaj Pragati Sahayog, and a talk from Anand, a ragi farmer based in Karnataka, highlight the importance of paying attention to sustainable agroecology and traditions, and their relevance to a thriving food system. As we learn about how food is grown with care and consideration, the zero waste Cooking Workshop and Chef Radhika Khandelwal’s dedicated food stall teaches us how to consume sustainably.
Curating the Culinary Arts segment, our goal is to rekindle the relationship between people and the food they consume, centering the stories and lives of local food producers, culinary traditions, lesser known recipes, and forgotten heritages.
Essentially, you will find…
- Hands-on workshops parting important, yet often disappearing skills in agroecology and sustainable cooking practices, as well as storytelling and art spaces to explore these topics through creative lenses.
- Artistic culinary installations made from food waste and locally sourced materials, led by expert farmers, chefs, and activists.
- Food stalls to sample regional delicacies and interact with local producers and cooks.
- Activities for everybody, ranging from adults to children, with tangible experiences that explore the material joy of getting our hands dirty with art and food.
But why is this important?
Our curation at Serendipity Arts Festival 2023 is motivated by the delight and curiosity we feel when interacting with, playing with, and thinking about food, as well as our appreciation for the labour that goes into growing food. Equally, it is led by our guiding principle of making meaningful change within the Indian food system. We aim to broaden the ways in which people perceive, consume, and interact with food, one step at a time.
How can you be a part of our curation?
Food Stalls
Serendipity Arts Festival invites passionate food entrepreneurs, chefs, and artisans to participate in the festival. If your culinary creations align with the themes of agroecology, heritage, memories, community, and zero waste, we encourage you to be part of this wonderful journey. Together, let’s create an unforgettable culinary experience that celebrates not only the flavours, but also the values that nourish our lives.
Join us at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2023. Let’s make this an event to savour and remember!
Please click here to follow the application procedure for Food Stalls.
Immersive Installations
Have you ever found yourself living away from home, desperately dialling up a sibling, parent, or family member to ask for a recipe or seek advice on how to use a particular ingredient? Especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us found ourselves grappling with a deeper longing for home and the solace of our family’s cherished recipes.
‘A Longing for Home Food Booth’ is an immersive and interactive art installation that beautifully weaves together cultural heritage, culinary traditions, and the heartwarming connections nurtured through food. Divided into two unique experiential sections—the ‘Listening Chamber’ and the ‘Phone Booth’—this installation features a series of vintage-style phone booths that bridge the gap between past and present, evoking a sense of nostalgia and intimacy.
Each booth offers a unique experience that pays homage to the profound influence of family recipes. As you step into these booths, you’ll embark on a fascinating journey that captures the essence of cherished culinary memories through audio recipes sourced from across the country ahead of the festival. If you’d like to participate in the collection process, stay tuned for further information!
Fun Workshops
One of our collaborators, Zinedabaad Collective, is conducting free online zine-making workshops together with some exciting partners in the lead-up to the Serendipity Arts Festival! Each workshop will explore food from a different perspective, from imagining food utopias to exploring the magical world of fungi. These workshops are free for all and the zines made at these workshops will populate Potluck: The Cui-Zine Library at SAF. If you’d like to participate in these workshops, stay tuned for further information!
We will have a lot more updates in the coming months, so stay tuned to this page and our social media handles for all the delicious scoop. See you at SAF 2023!
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