Commons Feast Virtual Monthly Meet-Up

Commons Feast Virtual Monthly Meet-Up is a regular participatory performance to share knowledge and companion around wild and commons foods, materials, and medicine.

Extending The Commons Feast, which formed part of The Commons: Re-Enchanting the World (2020-22), these events bring people together across distance to eat, listen, and exchange ideas in a relaxed, welcoming space.

The event is free and all are welcome - whether you are a seasoned forager or have never eaten so much as a blackberry from a hedgerow.

What happens?

Each gathering is guided by a simple, open score:

Forage for a wild/free/commons/foraged/spontaneous ingredient in your local landscape and prepare something from it to eat and/or drink to share and discuss.

From this starting point, the event unfolds through conversation, sharing, listening, and eating. You might:

• bring something you have foraged, grown, prepared or witnessed
• share knowledge, recipes, or observations
• respond to a theme or provocation
• eat together on screen
• or simply join and listen

Of course, if you aren’t able to forage for anything, you are still very welcome to join.

Why join?

Learning about and gathering free, organic, nutritious wild food in abundance can be a political act - one of resistance against capitalism and the historical erasure wrought by enclosure.

These gatherings foster:

• knowledge-sharing
• the rediscovery of foods and medicines from the commons
• the exchange of preparation methods
• and conversations around ecology, food security/ sovereignty, colonialism, and the commons

I am always excited to see where the experiment goes, as we collectively witness the seasons together through our wild foods and landscapes.

Practical details

• Online via Jitsi
• Approx. 1 hour
• Book via Eventbrite
• Bring something to eat or drink (optional)

About the work (for those who want more context)

Commons Feast is a participatory performance in which dispersed participants gather around food, ritual, and shared presence online.

Rather than only a single event, it is also durational, unfolding across many months (since October 2022). Each encounter contributes to a cumulative, evolving social sculpture shaped by repetition, return, and the rhythms of the seasons.

Participants join from kitchens, bedrooms, offices, studios - wherever they can safely eat - bringing their local landscapes into the shared space.

Commons Feast emerged from a need to ask: How do we gather and share food when sharing air is dangerous?

The virtual format enables participatory food and eating performance in a way that is COVID-safe and more accessible, allowing people to join across geographies and circumstances, including those navigating health risks, disability, caring responsibilities, or time and financial pressures.

Here, care is practised through attention, repetition, listening, and shared ritual - even when we are not physically together.

Artistic and conceptual context

The work is informed by foragers and writers including:

• Mo Wilde (The Wilderness Cure)
• Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass)
• Robin Harford (Eatweeds)

It also aligns with Fluxus-inspired practices, particularly event scores such as those by Alison Knowles, where everyday actions of preparing food, eating, and noticing  become forms of artistic practice.

Commoning, ecology, and care

Commons Feast is not simply a foraging group or an online supper club, but a practice-based inquiry into how we might gather ethically around food in a time shaped by ecological crisis, enclosure, and ongoing pandemic conditions.

By reconnecting with wild foods and diverse ingredients, the gatherings aim to resist extractive logics and support more relational ways of knowing and being - with each other and with the more-than-human world.

A seasonal, evolving practice

Since its beginnings, Commons Feast has brought together participants from across the UK and internationally, collectively witnessing shifts in urban, rural, and coastal landscapes, as well as our own inner terrains.

Some months are abundant, others leaner,  but sustenance is found in repetition, shared attention, and collective care.

Further resources

Substack: https://commonsfeast.substack.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandacouch_art/

See Eventbrite for more dates. FYI The event is usually 3rd Tuesday of the month.