The Food History Tour as a Research Method
FoodSEqual community researchers from Tower Hamlets and researchers from the University of Sussex, co-produced two community engagement activities in 2023 held as part of the Tower Hamlets Library and Archive’s Feeding the Hamlets exhibition.
These events consisted of a Food Lives engagement workshop held with local residents and a Food History Tour of Tower Hamlets. These activities also formed part of the community researchers’ training, providing experience in archival research, designing public research dissemination and honing presentation skills. Walking tours can serve as an alternative form of storying, or counter-mapping which can reveal inequalities in society and enable us ‘to connect with stories in and of the landscape, to see and feel the experiences of another in embodied ways, and [open] a dialogue and space where embodied memories, knowledge and experience (biographies) can be shared’ (Mullally et al., 20221). Learning about food archives in the area deepened our cognitive and embodied knowledge about the histories – some invisible or erased – of resistance, home-building, making a living and community commensality through food.
Collectively, we produced a map of the tour with artist Nasima Sultana (see images here) drawing on community, public and academic history illustrating the food histories of Tower Hamlets. We designed the tour map to enable local people and visitors to carry out their own exploration of the rich social, cultural and economic history of food and food production and the newer food economies in the area. These histories have shaped food production and consumption for over 150 years and flavour what locals buy, grow or eat in their own kitchens, local cafes and restaurants today.
References:
- Mullally, G. et al. (2022). ‘Walking, talking, [Re-]imagining socio-ecological sustainability: Research on the move/moving research’, Irish Journal of Sociology, 31(1), pp. 37-62