Recipes of Life
2025Socially engaged artwork
Multi-channel video installation
Recipes of Life is a community recipe sharing and cooking project blurring the boundaries between social arts practice, therapeutic community approaches and continuing projects from the now closed Vietnamese Mental Health Services and the Social Kitchen. The Recipes for Life is a therapeutic concept developed by Australian therapist and chef, Natalie Rudland-Wood (2012). The approach uses food and recipes, to thicken the 'thin' or forgotten stories of people's lives in ways that make people stronger.
Workshops help to:
-create a safe containment of emotions
-develop new bonds and attachments to others
-build new relationships and connections
-provide a creative outlet for stories and creating recipes
Variations of the workshops have taken place at different venues and contexts such as Reimagining VMHS workshop, Newham Festival of Stories, ESEACC Hackney Creates, and Deptford X Ngon Qua. Each version of the workshop has been different and the Deptford X version is more ambitious as it is turning Recipes of Life into a TV cooking show. The following versions of Recipes of Life hopes to go international, for 2nd/3rd generation Vietnamese diasporas reconnecting with their Vietnamese heritage in Vietnam with overseas visits and cooking projects in Vietnam. Another element to the Recipes of Life project in London is growing and tending to our own vegetables as a method to tending to our own growth and resilience as community members. Through focusing on participants own interests and abilities, this project hopes to create a bridge to overcome the barriers to arts engagement with so called marginalised communities.
The Deptford X version will be an exhibition launching in July 2025 as part of the core commissions at Deptford X Arts Festival.
Commissioned by Deptford X, with the support from Vietnamese Family Partnership.
Photo by Kvet Nguyen
https://deptfordx.org/
Photos of:
Making Recipes of Life Hot Pot at Reimagining VMHS Workshop, October 2023
Making Summer Rolls, Spring Rolls and Mango Salad at Central Park Cafe Newham Festival of Stories, November 2024
Making Vietnamese Lemonade at Royal College of Art, MA Sculpture, Annual Festus programme, November 2024
Making Hai Phong Crab Noodle Soup at Evelyn Community Centre, December 2024
Making Recipes of Life Hot Pot at Reimagining VMHS Workshop, October 2023
Making Summer Rolls, Spring Rolls and Mango Salad at Central Park Cafe Newham Festival of Stories, November 2024
Making Vietnamese Lemonade at Royal College of Art, MA Sculpture, Annual Festus programme, November 2024
Making Hai Phong Crab Noodle Soup at Evelyn Community Centre, December 2024
Making Banh Gio Vietnamese Pyramid Dumplings at ESEA Community Centre, February 2025
