FUTURE FOODS
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES AT THE FESTIVAL OF THRIFT
Help us explore sustainable food futures
@The Festival of Thrift, 21st and 22nd September
Around 30% of all global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food. There are people across the world working to revolutionise what and how we eat.
If you and I are about to live through a transformation of our food system - how our food is grown, made, cooked, and eaten - shouldn’t regular people and communities be shaping that transformation?
Our Future Foods programme is a community and volunteer-led exploration of sustainable food futures.
We have 3 activities happening at this year’s festival of Thrift, and we need your help to deliver them!
More details on the different activities below
Sustainable Sausage
Synopsis: Drop-in participants will select ingredients from our sustainable larder and create their own sustainable sausage
Detail: The sausage was invented around 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. The British Public eat more than 175,000 tonnes of sausages annually. What does the sausage of the future look like?! Explore and discuss ingredients, their pros and cons, while you craft your sausage.
The sustainable larder will include a range of grains, spices, quorn, insect meat, and venison. Participants can either cook their sausage on site, or take it home for tea.
Volunteer Brief:
Work alongside Adam from Threads to facilitate the Sustainable Sausages workshops
Get hands in with the sausage-making machines
Assist people in selecting and mixing their ingredients
Talk participants through some of the ideas / stories / trivia around the ingredients
90 minute prep Zoom call ahead of the festival
Commit to a few hours availability on either of the festival days
The Abundance Mocktail Bar
Synopsis: mocktail bar celebrating seasonal, local abundance. Pre-booked workshops
Detail: Working with our partner community gardens and suppliers, we’ll focus on local, abundant materials to create a
selection of mocktails. Snappy mocktail names tbc, but example ingredients could include a courgette-juice, foraged mint and meadowsweet syrup, kelp shot, and more.
The story of the bar is around the contrast with highly exotic and distant ingredients we have come to take for granted that are casually used in cocktails and mocktails. What is the footprint of a Meadowtini vs. a Mojito?
Volunteer Brief:
We’ll teach you how to make the drinks, but the main job will be chatting with the public about the ingredients and ideas
Briefing on the morning of each festival day on the drinks and stories - 10am
Time commitment: arrive at the festival for 10am for a 1 hour briefing. Commit to a couple hours+ of time on either festival day
Future Food Mural
Synopsis: Artist, Kathryn Roberton, will be live painting a “living” mural exploring the chronology of our food system. Kathryn needs volunteers to help draw in festival visitors to help shape the “future” part of the mural
Detail: Visitors will walk along the mural which will pop with key moments and ideas from food history, ranging from domestication of pigs in the neolithic era, to the invention of the microwave.
The artist, supported by volunteers, will engage festival goers in mapping out the “future” panel of the mural - hazier and more discursive than earlier panels.
Volunteer Brief:
This is basically….chatting! Social butterflies needed :)
Ahead of the festival, read the briefing document thing we will be preparing explaining the scenes depicted in the panel
Join a 1 hour Zoom meeting with Adam to go through the stories and ideas depicted in the mural design
At the festival, circulate around the mural as Kathryn is painting it.
Draw in members of the public and talk to them about the panel and its contents
Draw out their feedback and comments, particularly on the Futures panel
Feed back your favourite ideas and comments from the public to Kathryn for inclusion on the mural
2 -3 hours prep reading ahead of festival, then as much time as you can give over the weekend