The Art of Using Food to Build Community

I'd like to highlight a phenomenon I am observing is in the art scene: the rise of art activism and community driven art projects that involve food. They are hot right now.

Danny Woo International District Community Gardens, International District, Seattle, Washington. In the distance you can see part of the roof of Qwest Field, the cranes of the Port, and the tower of King Street Station. (Photo by Joe Mabel)

In Somerville in Massachussets, a spaghetti dinner and theatre event in May:

Performers included the following artists, thinkers, and doers :

18 reasons engages the community through food and art. They offer an ongoing programs of wine tastings, art shows, community dinners, food classes and interactive workshops.

In Toronto, Hart House Social Justice Committee, Art Committee and Farm Committee explored the connection through a panel discussion, From Field to Art: Discussing the Link Between Food, Art and Social Justice.

Finally, the fallen fruit project, created as part of an artistic collaboration by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young is

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Using fruit as our lens, Fallen Fruit investigates urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community. From protests to proposals for new urban green spaces, we aim to reconfigure the relation between those who have resources and those who do not, to examine the nature of & in the city, and to investigate new, shared forms of land use and property. Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration that began with creating maps of public fruit: the fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles.

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Over time they have expanded. Projects now include:

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Public Fruit Jams in which we invite the citizens to bring homegrown or public fruit and join in communal jam-making; Nocturnal Fruit Forages, nighttime neighborhood fruit tours; Community Fruit Tree Plantings on the margins of private property and in community gardens; Public Fruit Park proposals in Hollywood, Los Feliz and downtown LA; and Neighborhood Infusions, taking the fruit found on one street and infusing it in alcohol to capture the spirit of the place.

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Heres a good overview of the community garden scene from the Guardian:

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Artists are engaging with issues around the environment and society. Suddenly, there is an abundance of projects that seem to be affecting the way Americas cities think about themselvesWhat artists do is seed things. They plant ideas, says Michaela Crimmin, head of the RSA Arts and Ecology Centre. Which maybe explains why these cheap, relatively small-scale projects like Franceschinis can have such an influence.

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