Culinary Arts at Serendipity Arts Festival 2023

Through an immersive Culinary Arts curation at one of South Asia’s largest multidisciplinary arts festivals, we encouraged visitors to reexamine their relationship with food and its many aspects, including memory and identity, farming practices, and how our food reaches our plates.

Curating for the eighth edition of Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa was an exciting opportunity for The Locavore to meaningfully communicate ideas that matter to us. It nudged us to think of food in familiar and new ways: as an urge and longing, as a way to remember, as a means to pleasure and comfort, as resistance even.

Recognising that food doesn’t just equal eating, we invited people to look beyond the obvious, using food as a lens to make sense of the world. In our role as culinary curators, we attempted to bring together powerful work from across India that has deepened our understanding of food, and the people responsible for it.

“Through immersive storytelling, thought-provoking discussions, interactive engagements and experiential activities, we aimed to reignite the profound bond between people and their food.”

— Thomas Zacharias, Chef & Founder of The Locavore

Our Approach

• Design ways for people to examine their own relationships with food and expand collective understanding.

• Celebrate India’s diverse culinary histories and heritage.

• Encourage people to be more aware of where their food comes from, and who grows it.

• Cultivate a sense of connection in a world that is increasingly fragmented.

Our Curations

Paint with Food

A freewheeling activity where visitors, especially children, drew and painted food in interesting, unusual ways.

A Longing For Home Food Booth

An immersive listening experience through people’s oral food memories, stories, and relationships.

The Cui-Zine Library with Zinedabaad

Eight workshops, online events, and open submissions stacked up to make a whimsical library featuring 350 food-themed zines.

The Locavore Shuffle

A staple at our events, #TLShuffle saw strangers come together for one-on-one conversations on kitchens, memory, identity, and local markets, among a range of other prompts.

The Doing Good Through Food Challenge

A multi-sensory experience across eight stations that encouraged visitors to playfully examine their relationship with food.

Know Your Desi Vegetables (KYDV) Kitchen

From colocasia root to banana flower and elephant foot yam, this dynamic, interactive kitchen showcased native Indian produce along with both traditional and newfangled ways to prepare it.

The Village (A miniature Community Kitchen and Mandi, recreated)

Inspired by bustling Goan bazaars, the space platformed local farmers, vendors, and members of women-led self-help groups to showcase the state’s rich culinary and crafts heritage.

Film Screenings by Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS) Community Media

A collaboration with Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS) Community Media, a leading voice documenting India’s culinary traditions from remote tribal villages in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

The Locavore Stall

From Bengal’s sweet nolen gur to indigenous mahua, ingredients from nine of our partner producers made their way into unique dishes on a menu.

The Food Lab: Workshops

Bringing together original and bold voices in the food industry for 22 informative and immersive workshops, including spirit tastings, traditional Goan cooking, and kitchen gardening.

Our Highlights

• 27 desi vegetables were in the spotlight at our Know Your Desi Vegetable (KYDV) Kitchen. Cooked in three different ways, visitors got to taste it all.

• Around 240 people participated in The Locavore Shuffle, finding the chance to talk to strangers about their experiences and memories around food.

• 350 food zines were created with Zinedabaad Collective as the facilitator.

• Over 180 plates of Grilled Chicken Millet Salad were sold at The Locavore food stall, which included three kinds of millets—kodo, foxtail, and little millet.

• 9 of our producer partners from across India were represented at The Locavore food stall, their products used in dishes like Chana Madra & Aloo Chaat with Himachali Green Chili Chukh, Kasundi Grilled Chicken/Prawns with Nolen Gur Syrup, and Dark Chocolate Smoothie Bowl with Mahua Granola.

• Over 65 recipes were collected and documented over the course of the Festival. 28 of these made their way into The Festival Cookbook, which you can buy here. 22 of them were archived in an audio format through A Longing for Home Food Booth. You can listen to them here.

• Over 50 women from 25 SHGs across 12 talukas of Goa were a part of The Village at the Art Park with a total of over 100 local dishes from various communities.

• A total of 52 collaborators—including cookbook authors, chefs, filmmakers, and farmers—conducted workshops at the Food Lab.

• In The Locavore’s kitchen, 9 cooks cooked more than 56 dishes over 9 days.

• Over a 100 pieces of delicious art were generated from our Paint With Food activity at The Grove.