In collaboration with Ingcungcu Community Development projects, Kenton on Sea, Eastern Cape, South Africa, Return to Origin will implement a youth-centred indigenous knowledge workshop and a short course in sustainable practice and alternative and purposeful leadership. Our vision is to illustrate how the co-creation of place, storytelling food creation and harvesting of recipes and community involvement in processes of planting, harvesting and preparing food, contribute to a deepened sense of belonging, self-worth and awareness. We will also cultivate the inter-relationship between self, community, and environment. Our themes that thread throughout our project have drawn from a collective agreement with the community as to what is important to them. The outcome is a rich potpourri of ingredients. Origins-Endulo, Yantlukwano - Separation severing, disconnection, land, food peoples, Imbewe -Seeds, Kula’Nan- Grow with me planting and harvesting together, returning home, we belong everywhere.
The creative outputs of these two workshops and conscious themes form the basis for a community-curated exhibition and sharing a meal together, as well as an opportunity to share arts, crafts and stories. The exhibition celebrates the extraordinary grassroots work done to hold communities together during the Covid-19 lockdown, and the shift towards a longer-term sustainable food and care system that values the stories and well-being of those who are part of it, and the natural world that supports them. The Exhibition is the collective work of story, memories of food as a community coming together, for the process of healing in a post Apartheid South Africa.