Have you ever enjoyed a meal together with friends and strangers alike?
Can you imagine a square hosting a big table that neighbours share for dinner in summer nights?
Is it possible to raise awareness and fight food waste by launching a public banquet prepared out of leftovers?
In recent years numerous initiatives worldwide have arisen using food to challenge the way people engage in urban public spaces. Combining various backgrounds such as art, architecture, activism or anthropology, this interventions have been put into practice without any commercial purpose but holding multiple intentions that range from enjoyment and celebration to education or political protest.
City Cook Book is a collection of initiatives enhancing public spaces by bringing people together through food culture. It aims to explore how food can be an effective tool to both transform our common spaces into sites for encounter and social interaction, as well as to engage with larger issues that shape our everyday urban life. Through its digital platform and its print-it-yourself publication, City Cook Book intents to visualize this phenomena, reflect upon it and inspire other initiatives.
contact[at]citycookbook.org
City Cook Book is a non-profit initiative developed by Claudia Sánchez and Íñigo Cornago.
This web and publication has been designed by ereslomastumas and programmed by Andrés Sedano.
Proyecto financiado por Ayudas Creación Injuve
Project funded by Ayudas Creación Injuve
in each project or by choosing it from the following list.If you prefer to print any content as single PDFs, you can just click 
A year-long project to create a celebratory school dinner that was grown, harvested, cooked and served by primary school children. The children worked in partnership with an allotment association, a gardener, a chef and a team of five artists.
Artists in residence for each season ran weekly workshops to devise public celebrations connected with the growing cycle and to create something towards the final feast. The allotment became an outdoor classroom for exploring all areas of the curriculum.
The project culminated in a fire-lit outdoor feast for 400 people on the allotment eating a dinner that had literally been grown under the diner’s feet and harvested, cooked and served by the children.
Clare Patey is an award winning artist and curator who creates participatory art projects and social spaces. She has worked nationally and internationally on commissions including: the London International Festival of Theatre, Channel 4 (winner of RTS award), Southbank Centre and The National Theatre. She is currently director of The Empathy Museum and part of the Edible Utopia collective creating an urban farm at Somerset House, London.