Public kitchen Launceston

Launceston Public Kitchen: Setting the Table – A series of Micro Events by Master of Architecture students at the UTAS School of Architecture and Design. 14 April, 2016.

Public Kitchen is a global exercise in social engagement and a vehicle to advocate for food justice. UTAS visiting scholar Kenneth Bailey from Boston’s ds4si (design studio for social intervention) asks the question, “If kitchens were public — like libraries, schools and basketball courts — how could they rearrange social life?” Moving away from spaces of charity like soup kitchens, which spatialise the idea that there are those who can afford to feed themselves and those who can't, and avoiding the schema of moral and political judgments built into the relationship of doing (or paying) for the other, Public Kitchen works to make space and “social room” for everyone. The hunch is that through creating a space that invites all to participate as equals, we create space for everyone's subjectivity, dignity and capacity.

Six Master of Architecture students from the School of Architecture and Design, working with Bailey and collaborators at TCotA, together created a version of Public Kitchen as a series of micro-events held in Launceston on April 14th, 2016. Less about food and dining, and more about public generosity and social engagement, the Launceston Public Kitchen transformed the sociality of the city for an hour or two. As the troupe wove there way through the streets of Launceston, the micro-events created momentary disruptions in social space: conversation and food were exchanged freely with smiles and laughter rather than cash in spaces where transactions around food are more commonly conducted within commercial spaces and monitored by governing authorities. Based on careful review and design critique of prior iterations of Public Kitchen, the Micro-Kitchen events extended DS4SI’s design methodology to create a version that was uniquely pitched to Launceston’s social and physical circumstances.