Slow Food Central Europe Presents the City Breadwinners Exhibition and Its New Travel Books
Within the framework of the Slow Food Central Europe project, Kinookus Association and City of Dubrovnik Development Agency DURA - in cooperation with Dubrovnik Natural History Museum - has organized the City Breadwinners exhibition, a special event to attract the municipal government of Dubrovnik and its citizens to the extremely rich, but still underappreciated gastro-cultural heritage of the area.
Extreme climate change, which brought the partner city of Venice to its knees and brought stormy southern winds to Dubrovnik, causing the highest wave ever measured in the Adriatic with 10.87 meters in the preparatory days before the exhibition presents a series of challenges to all city governments, among which is the rethinking of food policies. The two-day program of partners’ meetings, along with the exhibition and a study visit to Ston, also included a transnational workshop for project stakeholders. The guests at the workshop were Cristina Sossan from the Food Policy Office, City of Milan and David Matchett, Head of Food Policy Development of the famous Borough Market in London.
The backbone of the exhibition was a series of video interviews with people who inherited history and stories about local gastronomic culture in different ways, as well as knowledge and skills related to traditional products. Interviews were the result of detailed desk and field research which the Kinookus Association and DURA teams conducted in the area of the former Dubrovnik Republic. According to the Slow Food approach, apart from basic information about each speaker, the exhibition also emphasized the complexity of the territory of the former Dubrovnik Republic, including its peculiarities and interactions with other cultures. Special attention was given to the language component, i.e. phrases in local dialect regarding production, tasting, cultivation and other food related activities. Given the intimate setting of the exhibition space, the audience’s attention was focused on the speakers’ faces, which encouraged an immediate connection of trust and mutual respect. The exhibition also sought to inspire reflection on the dignity of food producers, as well as their image and position within modern society and its dynamics. Through these interactions, the food whose producer and way of production is known to us became food with a face.
Exhibition organizers expect concrete steps from the local government in terms of preservation and evaluation of this heritage, as well as its greater presence in tours of local tour guides, dishes of local restaurants, products in local shop windows, and more interest from the local scientific community for this type of heritage and corresponding research area. The exhibition will be made available to all interested museums and institutions which would like to host it.
On this occasion we are glad to present you the Travel Book dedicated to the five cities of the Slow Food Central Europe project: they are original travel companions with which to visit Brno, Dubrovnik, Kecskemet, Krakow and Venice with Slow Food suggestions to discover the five cities with an exceptional perspective. Travel journals to be consulted, compiled and saved, which at the same time enhance the gastronomic heritage and the tourism offer of each place, and which can be reproduced by other cities all around the world. Conveniently pocket-sized, they can be carried with you throughout your trip, and feature customizable pages, stickers, and a large section dedicated to annotations. Everything in these Travel Books is designed to invite traveller to build their own personal map of the city. At the end of the journey, each travel book will be a unique expression of a personal and emotional journey discovering the city, the original way in which we experience it.
All Travel Books are published both in the local language and in English and will be available in each participating city’s tourism offices, during festivals and other big events. They are also downloadable here ( https://www.interreg-central.eu/Content.Node/SlowFood-CE.html ) and her ( https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/publications/ ).
