Hey. HNY and all that!
When I wrote my last newsletter post in November '22, I had expected a slight slowing in the pace of my workload as some of my freelance projects came to an end. Having some exciting work opportunities meant I was ploughing through a congested funnel of projects in summer/autumn, and I ended up pretty frazzled, but not burnt. I’d planned a wee trip to Italy (a busmans holiday which would coincide with Slow Food’s Terra Madre) in September 2022, but made the error of kissing a cute but somewhat snotty man with the same cold symptoms I had just recovered from, and ended up sick and stuck in the UK instead.
For those who do not know me, much of my daily grind is taken up at Locavore CIC, in both the Edinburgh Dalry shop as Assistant Manager and from home, where I work as a Trading Coordinator. These jobs give me a stable income and freedom to pursue more creative projects, the social enterprise doing the important but difficult work of trying to make lasting change within the food system - an endeavour which is complex, but simpler to critique when things do not go to plan.
In November, Locavore CIC found itself in a position having to do emergency Crowdfunding to try to safeguard the future of the social enterprise, having not received the funding that it was relying upon. Our wee shop team found itself facing redundancies but worked together to reduce our hours and avoid lay-offs. My friend/colleague Straun and I also had a genius/hair-brained idea to run a pop-up shop featuring designer/makers whose work shared Locavore’s values and we'd hoped to bring into the product range. So we pitched it to Locavore, and a week and a half later (I kid you not!) we had opened a wee concession for December featuring the work of over 20 amazing designer/makers and indie producers, some goodies of which remain in the shop and the rest of which is still available to buy in our wee online shop. Overall, we donated £600 to the campaign in both stock and cold, hard cash! This meant December was all work, not much play, but I think it was worth the effort.
This month, I have finally taken a holiday - visiting friends in Murcia, packing books and whisky whilst battling my desire to also pack my laptop for some writing.
So, now I’m back to where I left you, albeit tax return submitted - making plans, some of which include using this newsletter to take forward some projects…
Endurance Art
I’m so pleased the Vittles piece “Tell me about your food tattoos’ was released into the wild last week. Thank you to all of you who have subscribed to this newsletter off the back of the piece! Having first pitched in 2021, being published in Vittles was a lofty ambition of mine, and seeing Jonathan, Sharanya and Rebecca’s editing process has been a really valuable experience. One I’m unlikely to forget now I’ve a panel tattoo on my left thigh as a result of the project! I plan to share more thoughts and resources about food and tattoos in future posts, as I really enjoyed exploring all the research I found during planning the piece.
I’d also like to say a big thank you to Gino, who designed the tattoo and let me interview him at the start of the project. The song I enjoyed discovering the most whilst on his table was this one, but if a project ever had a soundtrack from start to finish, this would be the playlist.
It seems I enjoy being a glutton for punishment as the next notable project I am embodying could also be viewed as endurance art. I will be doing a “wild food only” diet for a month as part of a research project into how wild food may affect the body’s microbiome. This is both scary and exciting! I expect most of my Spring to be centred around achieving this objective; foraging, learning, sharing and documenting the process. ‘Just think…you could write about food, and longing and desire,’ said a good friend as we discussed the idea. ‘Isn’t all of my writing about longing and desire?’ I replied.
I think that’s more than enough words from me for now, so next week I’ll be posting an ‘inedible kimchi’ recipe and more about future projects and my plan for ‘Amuse’.
Steph, have you heard of the new Microbiome Museum in Amsterdam?? Love that you're doing a project on it.