Exhibition to showcase fruit of food design training programme

AMMAN — After completing an intensive four-month training and mentorship programme, 11 participants from Lebanon and Jordan in the food design training programme FABRAKAT will exhibit four alternative food design systems in an exhibition at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts from March 19-23.

The food design systems respond to the training programme’s core values of combining social innovation, business development and environmental advocacy, according to a statement from the Goethe-Institut Jordan. 

The exhibition, Feeding Places, comes as a fruit of the home-grown pilot-programme FABRAKAT which was launched in November 2021 and is based on the 10-year research and practice of design studio Namliyeh in the field, the statement said. 

“Developed as an extensive learning journey to think deeply about the connections between food systems and complex social and environmental challenges, the participants have gained both a worldview and a critical understanding of the local context, traditional knowledge and possible food futures,” read the statement. 

Grouped into different clusters, the participants worked on pre-selected challenges within four industries where food is an integral part: Tourism, hospitality, education and city planning. 

The four partners are both public and private stakeholders, namely the Jordan River Foundation’s Karma Kitchen, the Greater Amman Municipality, Rum Planet Camp and Aliah Public School, the statement said. 

 “Our approach stems from the belief that real change comes from multiple-stakeholder design processes that amplify grassroots and indigenous efforts towards food sovereignty, building on cooperation over competition. We advocate for the emergence of alternative decentralised systems that closely link production with consumption,” said the architect-duo Aya Shaban and Manal Abushmais, founders of Namliyeh, in the statement.