Taste Exchange an intervention grew from the Our Cuisine=Our Stories workshops as a way to share the project and promote intercultural sharing in the community. The public could share a story related to a food ingredient in exchange for an experience of the project in the form of a surprise (taste, smell, texture) box, essentially getting a taste of the project in exchange for a personal story.
It began as a space from which public dialogue could emerge and personal interactions could take place through the creation of forms, images, and metaphors transmitting personal stories. Raising questions about broader social interactions and our tendency to revert to reductive stereotypes when confronted with people whom we perceive as different from ourselves, people could see problems and issues from a different perspective. These interactions and exchanges would challenge dominant representations of other cultures in Finland creating a more complex understanding, and empathy for them, among a broader public. |