Feasts for the Future: Devon, England

Over the course of 2018 a group of communities with an interest in transforming how we buy, use and generate energy came together to hold a series of ‘utopian feasts’. These communal meals acted as a medium in which ideas of a better future, and how it might be achieved, can be explored and tested, shared and supported, initiated and evolved.

Of course, any meal will have multiple direct relationships with energy use and generation: it will underpin everything from the cooking of the meal, to the food and drink consumed, to the surrounding infrastructure. But a communal meal also embodies in a particularly direct and powerful way how any one ‘sustainability’ issue cannot, ultimately, be kept separate from any other, or from the more intangible and unpredictable elements that otherwise sustain our lives.

Prior to the first ‘Feast’, participants from all the communities took part in two afternoons of workshops which looked at the idea of ‘imagining the future’ through four different disciplinary lenses: 

• arts and culture (David Sergeant)
• geography (Tim Daley)
• dietetics and public health (Clare Pettinger) 
• architecture (Bob Brown). 

Accounts of the workshops can be read on our blog: 

• Workshop 1: Narratives into the Future (literature & geography)
  
• Workshop 2: Narratives into the Future (food & architecture)