22 September 2004
Culture Kitchen -celebrating cultural diversity through food

Photo Opportunity: 1pm, Thursday 30 Sept 2004, Culture Kitchen Croydon United Reformed Church Addiscombe Grove, CR0 5LP. Event runs 10am-4.30pm.

You are invited to bring a vegetable, a spice, or a recipe, to help create a multi-cultural meal at Women’s Environmental Network’s Culture Kitchen, 10am-4.30pm, 30 September at East Croydon URC.
Many foods have been influenced by different cultures, and bring people together from entirely different backgrounds, attitudes and beliefs helping to foster a sense of identity and understanding.

Activities at the Culture Kitchen day include:

Cooking Workshop
Participants are invited to bring a vegetable, a spice or a recipe to the kitchen to co-create a multicultural meal. As part of the meal each person will describe what they have brought, cooked or prepared.

Story Telling
Traditional stories from Bangladesh and Guyana. Every culture has stories of food, with some offering similarities despite being from different continents.
· Singing workshop.
Singing traditional celebratory songs about food and harvesting and harmony songs. Open to all, not just "singers".

Medicinal uses of plants and food workshop
A qualified herbalist experienced in working with community groups will explore knowledge of traditional uses of plants and give uses of British herbs.

Fruity beauty workshop
Create your own beauty products and cleansers from everyday kitchen ingredients.

Rangoli workshop
Rangoli is a popular Indian art, which women mainly create on the ground in front of their houses using different spices, rice, lentils, leaves and flowers.

Exhibition
Collages, all on the theme of food and all made from waste materials, will be on display.

Caroline Fernandez from Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) said; “Culture Kitchen aims to bring people and food together in learning, understanding and celebration.”

Councillor Adrian Dennis, Croydon Council cabinet member for planning, environment and urban development, said: “The day’s dedicated to activities that will demonstrate the importance of food and herbs in so many aspects of our life. The highlight of the day will be the feast of flavours participants have helped to create.”

Women from groups involved in WEN’s Taste of a Better Future network of organic growers (including Croydon Guyana Link) will play a leading role in the day’s activities.

For further information or to book a place (cost £3, payable on the day) please contact:
Caroline Fernandez WEN Food Project Co-ordinator 020 7481 9004, Fax: 020 7481 9144, Email: food@wen.org.uk

ENDS

Notes to editors

1. There is a photo opportunity at 1pm of participants of Culture Kitchen taking part in the day and welcome by the Mayor of Croydon, Cllr Brenda Kirby.

2. Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) is a national charity and membership organisation which campaigns on environmental and health issues from a women’s perspective. It educates, informs and empowers women and men who care about the environment.

3. Culture Kitchen is supported by Croydon Borough Council, Croydon Guyana Link. Croydon Food Forum aims to bring together a wide range of individuals, community and voluntary groups, faith groups, statutory agencies, local producers and businesses to provide opportunities to network on food issues and topics of common concern. Funding has been provided by Croydon Council and Awards for All.

4. East Croydon URC is very close to East Croydon station, and easily accessible by bus, train and tram. The address is Addiscombe Grove CRO 5LP.

5. The taste of a better future network was set up three years ago to help ethnic minority women’s groups develop organic food growing skills. It recognises that such groups have little access to affordable organic food, particularly traditional fruit and vegetable varieties, or to gardens of their own. Over the last three years, the 30+ groups in the network have brought new life to some of the most unlikely spaces on housing estates and disused inner city plots. As well as nutritious food, they have enjoyed making new friends, sharing skills and bolstering their communities. The current project, ‘cultivating the future’, is helping the groups share and develop composting skills.