Images: Jonni Korhonen

Rehearsing Hospitalities Summer School 2023, Oslo curated by Yvonne Billimore

Collective Kitchen = where a group of people cook together

A collective kitchen means cooking in a group. The principle consists of preparing recipes in larger quantities, then distributing them in equal parts. Cooking in big batches is really economical and that’s how social movements were also created through this mechanism/tool/strategy.

Lunch time Collective Kitchen workshops for a three-day summer school with UKS (Young Artist Society) in Olso on Intimacy, Consent and Complaint (part of 5 year public programme called Rehearsing Hospitalities organised by Yvonne Billimore in association with Frame Contemporary Art Finland.)

This was all done remotely, with the group being equipped with a pack: ethical guidelines +aftercare, resources such as glossary, printed placemats, recipes and ingredients, prompts and audio.

Participants worked with collective strategies to prepare lunches for themselves / each other whilst responding to fun interactive activity prompts, listening to audios and generating meaningful discussion. Each activity responded directly to the themes such as listening to Access Intimacy and Institutional Ableism article and using prompts to discuss access intimacy in small groups, using the Under/Valued Energetic Economy map for writing a recipe/ letter/ manifesto as a form of complaint and pizza-making as consent methodology.

After 5 considerable years of different experiments with various types of workshops in many contexts (kitchen table conversations, art exhibitions, art schools, community events, online workshops +) I have finally gathered enough experience and feedback for what works well, though it is always a different experience with each group involved and constant evolving of methodologies.