Jamie Loveday - Sowing seeds for food deserts in the city

Futuresteading

The majority of us are living in cities, and the sad truth is that these highly inhabited hubs are food deserts. Places where food certainty is uncertain and what we do have available is a rapidly homogenising food landscape. The Food Lab is a program based in Sydney and designed to find ways to bring people closer to the soil that grows our food. Creating networks that cross disciplinary boundaries and support the birthing of language and connection points for the influx of migrants unable to translate our food culture.

We chat about ways of introducing people from communities who have different cultural backgrounds. Finding catalysts to move outside of their communities to share knowledge, culture and business capability.

At the foundation of all of this food culture building is TRUST. Jamie says 'You can’t go and eat at someone’s table without trust". TRUST is at the centre of everything. When someone cooks a meal for you, you build trust. You can’t love someone without trust first.

"I have the faith that my brother loves me when he cooks for me"

Finally, his key advice is 'If you aren’t blessed with enough resources to travel, consider connecting to the cultural pockets in your own city".
Things we talked about
Food Lab
Beau Miles: Cook River episode on You Tube
Bread and butter project

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Show NOTES
A lotta rockiness along the way but it grew & evolved with the participants needs
Particularly focussed on female, migrant communities
Marginalised communities using food to connect with one another
Building the diversity of the food landscape in Sydney
Food is something that can be offered even when life is filled with utter newness
Eliminating the potential of putting too much debt at the outset of a business
“Assets are power in hospitality”
The food scene is in danger of becoming homogenised due to the cost of establishment
The power of mentorship to avoid the loneliness of business
The chicken and egg of being small and not well resourced but being flooded with applications for support
Providing a strong stepping stone to graduate people to their own kitchens
Impact multipliers - equipping people to support others
100% of the people will employ 4-7 people in the next 3 years
Why our urban centres are food deserts
Pomegranate molasses as a way to connect cultural groups
Normalising enough and not needing to be ‘excessive’
The power of sharing a meaningful recipe
There’s something in recipes that lead people back to independence - Food speaks to our identities, holds our stories, this cant be taken away from someone
As soon as you remove language you remove culture. When food is a language, it can’t be taken from you.
Everyone has a recipe they just want to share
What does it look like to belong to a huddle in a city -
You don't realise how rich culture is until you bust out of your safety zone and look in as an outsider
He feels shame for growing up in such a place of privilege which buffered him from the realities of other pockets in exactly the same city but with much less privilege.
“I grew up with a lack of multiculturalism but food can bridge that and connect you to communities you mightn't have had access to”

Singular word - TRUST

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