Agency Archives — The Common Table

Food Design, It’s Complicated

6. August 2025
17 minute read

Can Food Design improve our relationships with food or is it just a grandiose term for decorative plating? Leading voices in Food & Design, Priya Mani, Sonia Massari, Fabio Parasecoli, Laila Snevele, and Sophie Lovell confer at a communal table moderated by our own Orlando Lovell.

still from the documentary The Edible Indian by Cass Gardiner showing a Native American family sharing a meal in a forest

The Good Life

10. July 2025
20 minute read

First Nations filmmaker and curator Cass Gardiner talks to The Common Table about stewardship, reciprocity, the bittersweet aspect of "home", and how she uses food to open a window for non-Native people into her world and community.

Change the (Design) System

1. June 2025
8 minute read

A conversation with Systems Change Designer Ashley Scarborough about how she redesigned her own professional path and found food systems as her medium.

A Game of Monopoly

30. May 2025
10 minute read

We talk to Canadian political economist Jennifer Clapp about her latest book, “Titans of Industrial Agriculture” and the evolution of an extreme concentration of power that has allowed 12 companies to control most of the world's food production.

Water Buffalo herd wallowing in hot springs

The Capacity to Evoke

17. February 2025
10 minute read

Food and food systems are emerging as a vital focus of investigative cultural practice. The Common Table talked to curator Meriç Öner, former Director of Salt in Istanbul, who brings her unique perspective to the intersection of food, culture and art.

Gastronativism: Us & Them

1. February 2025
12 minute read

Food Studies professor Fabio Parasecoli on gastronativism, the "ideological use of food in politics to advance ideas about who belongs to a community". A conversation about "us", "them", food, politics, and systemic thinking.

Inside Story: Food Behind Bars

19. October 2024
15 minute read

Chef Natalia Middleton from the non-profit Food Behind Bars talks about about control, mental health, monopolies in the British prison system and creating change through food.

Decolonising Hazelnuts

11. May 2024
9 minute read

The founders of a tiny Anatolian and Berlin hazelnut business share how they are challenging one of the most powerful food monopolies with fair-labour, biodiversity, creating incentives and leading locally by example.

Microbial Sovereignty and Panchal Dairy

15. February 2024
8 minute read

Trevor Warmedahl reports on the marginalised Rabari community in Gujarat, India and how a dairy there is working to help return value to their pastoral ways through cheesemaking.