Fragrances and flavors to learn about the world: a journey through stories and cultures by savoring food

DUN Association, inspired by the model proposed by the Italian Partner, Stories of Possible Worlds, intends to offer women, who attend the Cooking Workshop, the experience of Story telling by applying it to the culinary culture of their own country, through personal and family storytelling.

Educational activities based on art-therapy for social inclusion through art-craft approaches, autobiographical storytelling techniques and digital storytelling to support migrant women in self-awareness and empowerment projects, both in-person and remote. This kit describes how to prepare activities and materials, offers evaluation and self-assessment models of activities and outcomes, making it easier to use this tool and to reproduce proposed activities.

Educational activities based on multi-ethnic culinary arts, integrated with autobiographical storytelling and storytelling techniques to support migrant women in self-awareness and empowerment projects. The workshop will be held in-person.

This workshop is addressed to migrant women of different nationalities of 20 to 50 years old.

The general objectives are to provide psychological support and care, social inclusion and business start-up. The specific goals are to learn about flavors and culinary traditions of different countries and also to create training for future professionalism in the restaurant and catering industry. In addition, through the tool of Story telling, an opportunity is created to tell one’s family and cultural story, starting with the typical dish of one’s country. It is expected that the women beneficiaries will increase their self-awareness, empowerment and confidence in themselves and towards the community.

At the first stage, the foodstuffs needed to make the various typical dishes chosen by each person will be purchased.

Seeking a professional and regulation-compliant space dedicated to the kitchen for making typical dishes.
Have all food products available.

In the first stage, each participant proposes a typical dish from her country that is meaningful to her, which is cooked by all participants with the help of a chef. The food represents a cultural identity that refers to the tradition of one’s country.
In a second phase, while tasting the cooked dish in a convivial meal, the woman who proposed it following the Storytelling guidelines tells her memories, both familiar and traditional, related to that dish.

In a third phase, the idea that DUN wants to implement is to collect in a Digital Book the different recipes proposed by each participant, described through the history and family memories, related to that food. The book will be complemented by the cooks’ photo-portraits and pictures of their cooked dishes.
Creating a book with the different traditional recipes and personal stories allows to maintain the connection with the land of origin but also to activate a process of coexistence with new cultures.

At every stage of the experience, close attention and listening will be paid to everything that happens and what the participants express about the experience they are having. This will allow continuous feedback on the creative act, which will put them in touch with deep, partly unknown aspects. This will lead to greater self-awareness and a deeper understanding of the relationship with the other. Touching personal and traumatic points can create moments of great emotion and emergence of fears related to migration wounds. In this regard, it is important to make available individual and group psychotherapeutic spaces in extra-laboratory settings dedicated to healing.

In the initial phase of the workshop, the working methods of the group are shared, which see:

• confidentiality;
• absence of judgment, and thus acceptance of different stories;
• we can use our native language in writing;
• we can share what we want;
• … (we ask if the group has any other proposals or requests….).

If the workshop includes the possible sharing of stories externally as well, we will specify that this action is also obviously not mandatory although we invite people to experiment with this additional step. Should particularly emotionally charged experiences emerge, in addition to immediate containment and support, it would be important to be able to offer a therapeutic space where such experiences can be processed, such as for traumatic experiences.

In the context of Cooking Workshop despite the fact that the number of women is substantial, it is not considered appropriate to divide the group because the purpose is to create a group dialogue, which creates integration among migrant women and intercultural comparison.

3/3 – The complexity of carrying out the proposed activity lies in the teaching time to make each dish and the time to cook it. Also requiring a lot of time are the stages of carrying out the Storytelling. In addition, time is provided for the writing of the book.