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
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The aim of the project is redefining the term of hospitality in the culture and using home as a public space by encouraging people to socialize and create collectively around the concept of food.
As a new comer to the Netherlands, Eettafel faciliated my process of integration and i have met with a lot of people by sharing dinner. Every monday, a person from the house voluntarily would be responsible for cooking and create some dishes out of the fridge, people would come with their drinks or even desserts and help with cooking, dinner would be served when it is ready and the rest of the people would be responsible for the cleaning of the kitchen. After dinner, things would go with the flow; drinking, playing a game etc.
After i returned to Istanbul, i wanted to keep this spirit with me. The culture i was raised in was based on different type of hospitality: serving to the guests. Another challange was gathering people i like and let them know each other and meet with new ones! I used social media to invite people for open dinner, even through it was a new concept, after a month, i could see all my friends enjoying the concept; meet some new people, try out new recipes and even create new ones! Then i moved to Izmir, so did the open dinner. In izmir, the concept has changed a bit as we grew bigger: after a year of gathering at home, now, we visit different places indoor or outdoor to eat together under the name of open dinner to create a homely atmosphere.
Cansu Pelin Isbilen. Otherwordly human being. Architect, photographer, designer, traveller, writer, lindy hopper, cyclist, jammer, dreamer.