Join us to explore Fallowfield Secret Garden in a workshop with artist Gregory Herbert. Greg has created some hand held quadrants that encourage the user to look closely at small pockets of the ground, thinking about what we can see, feel, hear and smell in each section. The quadrants can be playfully combined with string to make larger webs or meshes for investigating bigger areas of the space and the more than human life within each mapped section. We will finish the afternoon sharing what we have found over some hot hedgerow punch.

Suitable for all ages, children are to be accompanied by an adult.

More info and to book a place visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e...

Explore the newly planted Medicinal Garden with herbalist Edwina Hodkinson as she teaches participants to make seasonal cider and syrups whilst learning about the health benefits of plants

FREE but booking required - more info here

In preparation for our Ciders & Syrups workshop with Edwina Hodkinson we will be harvesting Elder and Hawthorn berries, Japanese rose hips and a selection of herbs from the garden.

Explore the newly planted Medicinal Garden with herbalist Edwina Hodkinson as she teaches participants to make seasonal salves and balms whilst learning about the health benefits of plants.

FREE but booking is required - more info here

Join artist Sneha Solanki and her two daughters, Rasa and Sona as foragers to explore edible 'things' found growing wild at the edges of the community garden site. This participatory workshop for children and adults is part of Sneha's ongoing project EATING | THINGS.

EATING | THINGS is an ongoing family project which documents the journey of two infants, as they start to learn and eat edible flora and fungi. Growing in knowledge and age, the children follow a parent, and later an older sibling to look for edible things on verges, bushes, trees, the ground, along the shore, in woods and amongst human dwelling.

The workshop is free to attend but booking is required. You can book a place here

------------------------------------------------------------------

Sneha's workshop at the garden is funded by A Modest Show, the colatoral event of British Art Show 9 showcasing Manchester's artists and artist-led venues.Follow @amodestshow for more information and updates about the programme and the artists involved.

*image courtesy Rebecca Lupton photography

Sound Art workshop: The Fallowfield Secret Garden & The Manchester Ear
A day’s workshop on deep listening, soundwalking and field recording. We will be exploring the garden through listening practices and technologies. This will form part of a research project at the University of Manchester and will involve recording participants' experiences during the course of the day. The main research interest is in exploring our engagement with place through sound art/music as well as exploring aspects of “acoustic ecology”, identity and wellbeing. You don’t need any previous experience in music, sound, art or ecology. The recordings made throughout the workshop will be shared in an evening event open to the wider public. 

The workshop is free with lunch, tea & coffee provided. Following the workshop there will be an evening showcase of the audio work made during the day. The evening showcase will take place from 5pm and participants are strongly encouraged to take part in this.

An evening of recorded and composed sound from Fallowfield Secret Garden.

The evening presents the culmination of a sound art project facilitated by The Manchester Ear (Ryan Woods) showcasing the work of community artists. Ryan will introduce the participants and their work as well as listening practices that were used to enhance awareness of the environment over the course of a 1 day workshop.

The event is free but booking is required. You can book a place here

---------------------------------------------------------

The workshop is supported by:

The Fallowfield Secret Garden, The Manchester Ear, The University of Manchester - NOVARS, SALC and A Modest Show

A Modest Show is the collatoral event of British Art Show 9 showcasing Manchester's artists and artist-led venues.Follow @amodestshow for more information and updates about the programme and the artists involved.

Beer & Berries as a regional festival showcase, connecting food & drink producers and suppliers to buyers and customers, set alongside a programme of talks, workshops, events and music. This year the theme of our programme focusses on the many uses of plants in the treatment of illness. Developed in partnership with Feast Journal, we will be foraging, planting, talking and listening.

From Monks to Medicine
The history of modern medicine has its roots in herbalism, as our skills with organic chemistry developed individuals were able to modify and adapt plants, extracting different compounds for the treatment of disease. Join us as we explore plants as both herbal medicine and a vital compound in contemporary pharmaceuticals.

visit the Hospitalfield website for further details of the day

Join us for the free outside event at Hospitalfield to celebrate the food & drink culture of Angus & Tayside & explore the work of artists, researchers & producers whose practice is engaged in food cultures as well as questions around sustainable futures.

This years festival will feature the film ‘Foreign Pickers’ by artists MyVillages & Company Drinks as well as an edition of Sneha Solanki's ongoing project eating/things.  A Spirited Talks programme sees founder of The Gin Bothy Kim Cameron, researcher Heidi Saxby & fruit farmer & member of Angus Growers Rowan Marshall, explore the shifting demands of farm labour, whilst Tom & Connie of East Neuk Market Garden, Jillian McEwan of Lunan Bay Farm & Kirsty Black Master Distiller at Arbikie Highland Estate discuss alternative economies of production. All talks will be live streamed throughout the day for those who can not make it to Hospitalfield.

visit the Hospitalfield website for further details of the day

Over the past 9 months Lion Salt Works has been working with Feast Journal and artists Fairland Collective to explore how the salt industry has shaped both our culinary traditions and the local environment.  Having hosted a series of workshops with Lion Salt Works volunteers and the public,

Fairland Collective invite you to join them for a delicious meal revealing the histories of the salt formed landscape of mid-Cheshire. Using local wild food, Salt Works pickles and a bit of theatre, the evening will be a celebratory feast of salty discovery, featuring a saltscape of salt shakers, readings on salt tourism and halophytes, and salt themed musical accompaniment from Chester folk band The Time Bandits.

Tickets are available to book here

Join Fairland Collective for a drop-in workshop preparing pickled accompaniments the Lion Salt Works inaugural Cheese Feast Festival: a weekend of talks, demonstrations and cheese-tastings celebrating the local Cheshire industry. Fairland will invite visitors to to prepare, taste and take home a variety of recipes which use salt to preserve.

Further info and tickets can be purchased here

Feast has developed a programme of talks on contemporary and sustainable approaches to craft brewing for the annual Beer & Berries Festival at Hospitalfield Arbroath. Speakers include:
Abby Rose, Farmerama radio; Anne Bodkin, Grow Beer; Sarah DeVos, New Heritage Barley and Kirsty Black Arbikie, Highland Estate.

An exhibition bringing together a collection of work by artist Matt Rowe and accompanying research materials gathered in collaboration with Feast editor Laura Mansfield. The artefacts and artworks reflect upon the story and tradition of John Barleycorn. Appearing in a 17th Century English folk song of the same name, John Barleycorn is the personification of barley and its associated food and drink. The lyrics detail the lifecycle of barley from grain to harvest to bread and beer and the seemingly indestructible spirit of the crop. Matt and Laura reconsider the John Barleycorn myth and its resonance within contemporary Cirencester, invinting members of the Guild of Straw Craftsmen to develop work for the exhibition as well as working with local brewery Corinium Ales on a heritage variety of beer "John Barleycorn - a beer of resurrection" for the project.

As part of the Institute of Making's Annual Open Day 'Delight and Disgust' Ellie Doney presents her second workshop for Feast: Sugar. The Sugar Library reveals the duality of sugar - a substance familiar yet extraordinary, both sickly and sweet, a medicine and poison. Visitors are invited to taste samples from a collection of sugars and their close relations, exploring the delightful and disgusting aspects of this diverse material, and its active and transformative properties on our bodies, senses and imagination.

The cookbook has long occupied an important cultural position. As an early printed book it was a prized heirloom treasured across generations, and in more recent times it has appeared in diverse forms to accommodate a range of eating preferences and cultural interests. Increasingly, with the turn to the online world this traditional collection of recipes is in danger of being replaced by easily-available single recipe internet searches. This symposium at the University of Portsmouth will consider the history of the cookbook, its cultural proliferation and significance, and its future in the cyber world, the smart home and the internet of things. Feast editor Laura Mansfield is contributing to the symposium discussing the ARHC funded cultural engagement project Eating History and her on going work with Feast

further information can be found here

Sarah Hardstaff, guest editor of Feast:Consuming Children will be in conversation with contributors Christopher Owen and Amy Webster. Drawing upon titles in the Children's Book Collection, they will discuss their individual research and the many meanings of food in children's fiction.

Further information on the event & participating speakers can be found here

Collaborating with Ellie Doney and The National Caribbean Heritage Museum- Museumand Feast invites visitors to explore diverse forms of sugar & our complex relationship to their hidden histories.  As part of the evening Ellie has developed the first of her series of sugar focused workshops - Sugar Creation: a making and tasting session revealing the active properties & diverse morphology of sugar. Participants are invited to explore sugars' materiality through the casting process, making their own sugary forms.

Free event, booking essential
Further information on the evening can be found here

Join Feast: Consuming Children guest editors Sarah Hardstaff and Dawn Sandrella-Ayres at the Children's Literature Research Centre, Cambridge University for a roundtable discussion exploring food in children's literature - from traditional fairy tales to American College girl fiction.

A journey through the tastes and smells of Joyce’s Dublin at the James Joyce Centre. Accessing Joyce’s writing through the food and scents that frame them, an 8 course ‘tasting’ menu will provide a range of food encounters that will reflect and unravel ideas in Joyce’s work. The evening will include readings, artworks by Nuala Clooney and Kaye Winwood and a miscellany of key foods and ingredients referenced by Joyce.

The evening is curated by Elisa Oliver in collaboration with the James Joyce Centre Dublin and Irish Food Trail. Places can be booked here

Feast launched Hot Pot, a publication containing essays, fiction and recipes responding to the work of Anthony Burgess with oysters and Bloody Mary's at the Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester.

Taking Burgess’s recipe for Lancashire hot pot as a framework from which to discuss and interpret the varied activities of preparing, producing and consuming food, Hot Pot brings together new works by Will Carr, Melanie Jackson, Kit Poulson, Niamh Riordan and Marie Toseland as well as a collection of recipes from Manchester chef Mary Ellen McTague, Fairland Collective and Studio Morison. Diverse, expansive and idiosyncratic, each contribution to the book presents a unique take on Burgess’s recipe for hot pot and the role of food more generally throughout his extensive oeuvre.

Hot Pot is now available to purchase here and from The Modern Caterer at the Whitworth Art Gallery Cafe, Manchester.

Bringing together 17 practitioners from the fields of design, jewellery, ceramics, metalwork and sculpture Ambiguous Implements is a touring exhibition presenting a selection contemporary works that playfully reconsider the familiar objects of our day to day domestic life.  Re-thinking the tools we use for eating, grooming, cooking and cleaning, the exhibiting artists have employed and subverted traditional craft techniques, reframed existing tools in new sculptural assemblages, or given seemingly banal objects new functions and effects

Participating artists include; Rob Anderson, Aimee Bollu, Caroline Broadhead, David Clarke, Nuala Clooney, Rachael Colley, Rosie Deegan, Kate Farley, Daniel Fogarty, Kate Haywood, Jasleen Kaur, Julie Mellor, Maria Militsi, Rebecca Ounstead, Matt Rowe, Jonathan Trayte & Abbie Williams

www.ambiguous-implements.co.uk

A talk by historian Rachel Rich and artist Catherine Bertola on their current collaborative project at Leeds Beckett University. The talk marked the launch of the publication Setting the Table - The Home Studies Collection documenting a series of responses to the Home Studies Collection, held at Manchester Metropolitan University Library, commissioned by Feast.

A PDF of the publication is available to download here

Working with Touchstones Gallery, Rochdale Feast editor Laura Mansfield developed a meal to celebrate the launch of the exhibition Going Public - The Napoleone Collection. Throughout the evening food was eaten from crockery, cultery and servingware made by artists Edwina Ashton, Nuala Clooney, Rachael Colley, Matt Rowe, Heather & Ivan Morison,  Marie Toseland & Jonathan Tratye. The table cloths were designed and printed by Daniel Fogarty

Feast will be participating in Eaten by... a one day event organized by the Graphic Design & Illustration Department at Sheffield Hallam University. Eaten By… will investigate different aspects of design for, with and around food through a series of talks by: Here Design, Sarah Snaith, Doors of Perception, Simon Wheeler, GrowX, The Cathedral Archer Project Sheffield and Laura Mansfield.

Artist Jonathan Trayte and Feast editor Laura Mansfield presented an evening of food, readings and conversation in response to Traytes' solo exhibition Polyculture at The Tetley Leeds. The evening marked the launch of Feast: Decoration with readings by Kit Poulson, Niamh Roirdan and Stephen Hepplestone. Documentation of the event can be viewed here

Having undertaken a period of research into the Home Studies Collection Susannah Worth author of Digesting Recipes. The Art of Culinary Notation presented a response to a selection of cookbooks. Discussing the recipe as a text that invites both a future imagining and details a past activity Susannah touched on cooking as a memory device, a tool for action and a narrative of aspiration. Attendees were invited to browse and engage with a selection of items from the collection and joined in a game of culinary consequences.

Having undertaken a period of research into the Home Studies Collection artist, performer and writer Augusto Corrieri gave an informal lecture that drew upon his practice as a magician and performer, presenting multiple connections between the fields of magic, the history of performance art, and the dining table. Focusing upon the question of hidden or unseen labour Augusto drew links between a history of vanishing ladies, the preparation of the dinner table and contemporary acts of conjuring.

An evening of discussion. Having undertaken a period of research into the Home Studies Collection Dr. Bryce Evans and Beryl Patten presented their reflections on the different ‘histories’ contained within the collection. Bryce Evans discussed aspects of the collection that related to the consumption and availability food in World War 2 revealing the role that food played in international conflict. Beryl Patten considered the history of the Hollings Faculty of Home Economics from which the Home Studies Collection originated alongside the range of material and activities that the management of the domestic home entailed.

An afternoon of discussion.

Having undertaken a period of research into the Home Studies Collection artist Catherine Bertola and food historian Dr Rachel Rich presented responses to a selection of archival material. Rachel Rich discussed her continued research into practices of time keeping in the 19th Century home reflecting on the way domestic advice manuals of the period applied the language of modern, public time management to the private sphere as well as the aspirational fictions of personal and social improvement imbedded in the publications. Catherine Bertola discussed her artistic practice and creative interest in reframing and reconsidering the past, in particular women's roles in relation to domestic spaces and contexts. Catherine ended her presentation by showing a new film work that she had been developed in response to material in the Home Studies Collection. 

I am sometimes mentally and physically ill for Lancashire food — hot pot, lobscowse and so on — and I have to have these things. Anthony Burgess interviewed in Paris Review, Spring 1973.

Born and raised in Lancashire Burgess wrote passionately about the traditional cuisine of his youth.  Traveling extensively in his adult life he often wrote about a longing for the ‘hot pot and tay’ of his home county. The exhibition brings together writings, recipes, and interviews from the Foundation’s archive with a selection of cookery books and serving ware from Special Collections Manchester Metropolitan University. Working with both collections Feast presents an exhibition of historical material that celebrates the food of Burgess’s north: the rich brown of strong tay, hot pot, and HP sauce.

The exhibition continued until the 30th of May. Documentation of the exhibition can be viewed here

In collaboration with acclaimed Manchester chef Mary-Ellen McTague and the International Anthony Burgess Foundation Feast curated an evening meal exploring the making and eating of food in the life and work of Anthony Burgess. The artist Marie Toseland was commissioned to produce a new film work for the evening and a series of readings of recipes from Burgess's works were performed by Dr. Sam Ilingworth, Dr. Angelica Michelis and Susannah Worth alongside musical performances by the tenor Timothy Langston.

Images of the event can be viewed here 

An evening presentation of archive material launched the forthcoming programme of events around the Home Studies Collection. 

The Home Studies Collection is an exciting and unique collection of books exploring the subject area of domestic economics that were originally held at the Manchester School of Domestic Economy. The collection contains more than 700 books on a broad range of topics including food production, household management, food preservation, cooking, food technology and regional cookery. It includes works by Alexis Soyer, Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin, Elizabeth Raffald, Eliza Acton and Mrs Beeton alongside material from the National Food Survey. Feast have commissioned artists, academics and writers to undertake research into the collection and present a series of responses to the material in the form of talks, presentations, new artworks and performance lectures. The individual responses will take place between April and July 2016.