The Locavore Shuffle

At a time when real, honest connections with people are hard to come by, perhaps it should come as no surprise that The Locavore Shuffle is consistently a crowd-puller. Built around the idea of facilitating meaningful conversation around food, it invites participants to share their experiences and views with strangers.

Picture this: you are sitting across from a stranger and chatting based on a prompt from a cue card (for instance: What is the earliest memory of food that has stayed with you?). After seven minutes, you move places, and begin a new conversation with a different person. The Locavore Shuffle works in a way that participants are engaged in one-on-one conversations, based on cue cards that explore topics such as kitchens, memory, identity, local markets, sustainability, food systems, and so on.

The Locavore Shuffle is more than just a conversation-starter; it’s a platform for cultural exchange, personal growth, and community-building. While there is room for spontaneity and discovery, The Shuffle demands tight planning and execution. By the end of it, as a participant, you would have engaged on a personal level with at least six to seven people. At the festival, we observed several people making plans to meet later, or go see an art exhibit together. As an organisation that cares deeply about building communities, this is what a win looks like for us.