Food Dialogues: Cape Town 2021 was a virtual event hosted from 6 August – 14 October 2021, themed around the local voices of ordinary residents. It took the 2020 event as a point of departure for bringing further diversity of voices into dialogue regarding our food system, turning away from exclusive engagement with experts and toward more lived experiences of individuals who engage in their own ways with the food system daily, and over the course of a lifetime.
The event kicked off with the release of 10 pre-recorded interviews with local residents, several of whom then participated in a live panel discussion, Local Voices, where ideas for solutions to the challenges, dreams for the future, and opportunities for ordinary people to help one another were shared.
A second panel discussion was hosted, Dialogues through Food, with three chefs bringing a virtual plate of food to the table, using the medium of food to explore how a plate of food connects us to our society and culture, to one another, to memory, our economy and our future.
Key moments from these events were consolidated into a video montage:
Dialogues 2021 Key Moments
A third panel, Global Events, Local Insights, was hosted with food systems experts to unpack the dynamics between global events and local realities, drawing on the contemporaneous staging of the UN Food Systems Summit to explore how these global-local dynamics help illuminate our problems and opportunities in Cape Town, and what lessons and insights can assist with the challenges we face in our local food system.
Food Dialogues 2021 was hosted by the SA Urban Food & Farming Trust with co-host and sponsor SOLVE@Waterfrontand co-sponsored by the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security. Partners included the African Centre for Cities, the Southern Africa Food Lab, ICLEI Africa, City of Cape Town, Western Cape Government, Western Cape Economic Development Partnership, Oranjezicht City Farm and Marketand Derrick.
The full 5.5 hours of recorded engagements are available for viewing on the Food Dialogues YouTube channel.
Related documents: