The Griot of Carmiano, raconteurs of gastronomic tradition Fri 29 May 2020 17:05 In West Africa the griot was – and is – a poet, singer, musician and actor and storyteller: a living repository of oral tradition. The Griot of Carmiano, a town in the Salento peninsula not far from Lecce, are raconteurs of gastronomic traditions – and they don't all come from Africa
A community united for a better, different future Thu 21 May 2020 13:57 In this historic moment which we're living through it's difficult to imagine the sounds, colors, smells and the physical intensity of this gathering which in October should return to the pavilions of Lingotto. Yet, as never before, this network is alive and active, strong and compact. The physical distancing which we're now gotten used to at every latitude of the globe cannot put a stop to the solidarity, the determination and the militancy of those who fight every day to change a food system which destroys the environment and creates exclusion and poverty.
A Great Future Awaits Us: the Gastronomic Educational Community of Etna Thu 14 May 2020 18:01 What is the future going to look like, as we move into the post-pandemic era? Do we imagine it to be better or will our environmental and social situation continue to deteriorate? In Catania, Sicily, Mario Traina (a former student of the University of Gastronomic Sciences) founded the Gastronomic Educational Community of Etna in 2019, a group of students, teachers, producers, cooks, consumers and institutions who've formed a network engaged in numerous activities.
Cooks and farmers: imagining the future together Thu 07 May 2020 15:19 Restaurants have been some of the hardest-hit by the Covid crisis, but in some cases they've been among the most adaptable, finding ways to survive and thrive, starting from the Earth, strengthening their networks, demonstrating their solidarity with all the vulnerable people that Covid has most harshly affected with an uncommon degree of creativity. This is the story of Altin Prenga, a Slow Food leader in Albania and member of the Cook's Alliance.
Solidarity strategies Thu 30 April 2020 13:04 Slowly, in Italy, a gradual return to "normality" is being planned. However, as many people are well aware, nothing will ever be the same again. The solidarity strategies put in place to tackle this crisis – social, economic and food-related – will be a vital resource long into the future.
Building our network: solidarity initiatives growing across Europe Thu 23 April 2020 20:03 Fortunately, the online network and social media have proved to be useful to the real, physical network of producers, cooks and activists, reducing the sense of distance and isolation and creating space for new initiatives of solidarity. There are lots of examples from Europe and across the world, involving everyone from producers to vulnerable families and the elderly.
When metropolis and countryside meet Thu 16 April 2020 10:50 By now we're all familiar with the name Wuhan, but what about Wenzhou? Though it hasn't received much media attention, this city in the southeastern part of Zhejiang has had the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 outside of Hubei Province, of which Wuhan is the capital. A metropolis and a province that have powered through stages of history in a relatively short time, like many places in China: from extreme poverty to wealth in the span of just a couple of generations. Today it's taking concrete steps to restore value to its rural culture and ancient traditions.
We belong to the Earth Thu 09 April 2020 16:58 Many of the striking examples of resilience in human communities are to be found among indigenous peoples, whose lifestyles have developed over millennia, from the Amazon rainforest to the Siberian Arctic.
Resilience in these frozen days Thu 02 April 2020 10:55 In these frozen days, we hear the word "resilience" being used a lot. It's normally used in the fields of ecology and biology, where it indicates the capacity of a material to repair itself after being damaged, or of a community or ecosystem to return to its initial state after being disturbed. After inflicting so much damage on ecosystems – often against its own interest – humanity must now try to adopt a strategy of resilience, and test its capacity to recover and return to how things were before the damage was done. But given that how things were was in many ways unjust, we shouldn't simply think of returning to the status quo, but a true refoundation, one which seeks a wise and natural equilibrium.
Slow Food Cuba: we’ll restart with solidarity, intelligence, unity Thu 26 March 2020 15:27 SARS-Cov-2 is everywhere by now, even in Cuba, and it arrived there rapidly. But just as rapidly, human beings are working to implement forms of resilience that often go beyond curing the disease. We're trying to find responses to what has happened, analyzing our responsibilities.