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The Common Table
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The Common Table is a community-binding platform that shares stories and ideas from around the world about people who are searching for ways to fix and improve our food systems. Our goal is to understand how systems of production, distribution and consumption can be changed – and to help identify the people and projects forging ways towards a better, fairer food future.

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"03:58 am: “My tilapia stock is teeming and thriving. Would you like to diversify your gene pool?”
"03:58 am: “My tilapia stock is teeming and thriving. Would you like to…
"Once a month I get to eat one tilapia. I have to keep at least thirty-six alive in the tank at all times. Sometimes I am a little sad to eat the only other earthlings that keep me company. Alongside my diet, it is vital to maintain a consistent fitness regimen, since my body easily weakens in an environment without gravity. Back on Earth, if you’d told me I’d be eating some kind of a spinach-beet-parsnip-legume concoction as my primary meal for the rest of my life and doing resistance-band daily workouts, I might have said “kill me now”. But here we are, and I am happy to be alive."
"Once a month I get to eat one tilapia. I have to keep at least…
Alone in space, the relationship with the routine of nurturing, eating and excreting is the only one our protagonist needs, but then they make the mistake of moving too close to another human. A systems-based science fiction story written and illustrated by the extraordinary artist, architect, educator, and founder of Bureau Spectacular, Jiminez Lai. Read the full article on thecommontable.eu
Alone in space, the relationship with the routine of nurturing, eating…
“I’m interested in how resistance doesn’t necessarily take the form of heroic acts but is really just embodied in everyday life and desire. I think that’s a familiar thing in Palestine where the continuity of life, or a dignified life, is under constant attack. The act of foraging might not always be a political act or appear to be an act of resistance, but in the context of Palestine, Israel and how the law came into place, it becomes another facet of the resistance against racist laws and policing.” Read the full interview “Foraging As Resistance” with Jumana Manna on our website thecommontable.eu.
“I’m interested in how resistance doesn’t necessarily take the form of…
“Whereas 'Wild Relatives' looks more at the top-down violence, or problems of science with regards to farmers and seed preservation, 'Foragers' is about the top-down violence of colonial laws around preservation practices. What was top-down towards the farmers in the first instance is top-down here towards the pickers – towards those who are actually engaged with the tradition of foraging, and who were not consulted before the law was passed. There is a commonality between the two films in that they are both ways of looking at the contradictions of preservation practices and of the erasures that accompany those preservation practices,” Jumana Manna tells Sophia Hoffinger about her new film 'Foragers', which permiers on the 12th of April 2022 @visionsdureel
“Whereas 'Wild Relatives' looks more at the top-down violence, or…
Ahead of the premiere of her new film 'Foragers', visual artist and filmmaker Jumana Manna talks to Sophia Hoffinger for The Common Table about how she addresses larger political and historical issues through her research and portraits of daily life, be it Syrian farmers trying to save their seed heritage from war or Palestinians exercising their right to forage on their land becoming an act of resistance. A fascinating exchange about how institutions created to preserve have often gone hand in hand with colonial expansion, extraction and erasure, and the age-old question: Who owns the land and who gets to decide what takes place on it?
Ahead of the premiere of her new film 'Foragers', visual artist and…
There tends to be a sense of utopian generalisation when it comes to master plans. How can you persuade a whole nation, brought up eating pretty much whatever they want, to change their diets? How do you differentiate forests grown for wood and other ecologically dysfunctional monocultures? How do you solve the tangled political and ideological issues around dairy farming practice, tradition, subsidy and ecology? But implementation issues aside, the very fact that Luxemburg is asking landscape architects and planners and ecologists to develop such holistic decarbonisation visions on a huge scale with food and people, and soil at the centre, is heartening.
There tends to be a sense of utopian generalisation when it comes to…
Together with Luxemburg architects 2001 @2001_tbsi and landscape and environment practitioners LOLA @lolalandscapearchitects from the Netherlands, 51N4E @51n4e formed a consortium to respond to a call by the Luxemburg Ministry of Energy and Spatial Planning to create a master plan for how the country can effectively and sustainably achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 as per the Paris Agreement. Read more about their plan on our website – link in bio.
Together with Luxemburg architects 2001 @2001_tbsi and landscape and…
A consortium of collectives including architects, urbanists and ecologists have developed a master plan for a whole country, centred around food production. The aim is to make Luxemburg carbon-negative by 2050 by changing diets and land-use practices. Read the full story on thecommontable.eu
A consortium of collectives including architects, urbanists and…
"How do we actually bring about change? This is what I have been exploring over the last few years. The idea of having a food policy for Borough Market was about having more of a voice within the food world."
"How do we actually bring about change? This is what I have been…
"I lived in the countryside in what was affectionately known as the “murder triangle” around the counties of Armagh and Tyrone in a rural farming community. There was a lot of connection within the community but it was very much a divided society – so I grew up with a sense of division rather than a sense of cohesion, or connection, or any idea that a community, a country and a people can live like that," writes @davidhmatchett. Read our newest article 'On Food and Connection' on our website.
"I lived in the countryside in what was affectionately known as the…
David Matchett grew up on a farm in Armagh, Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles. He spent the ’80s and ’90s in the thick of the London restaurant scene working with, amongst others, Sketch, then Jamie Oliver, before spending a decade as Head of Policy Development at Borough Market, then Technical Director of the Oxford Food Symposium. David’s work-life path is a personal and professional trajectory of many food-linked experiences. He shares his thoughts on food, belonging and identity with us.
David Matchett grew up on a farm in Armagh, Northern Ireland at the…
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