SOURCED is a public research project aimed at developing lines of inquiry into our relationships with food and drink. Over the course of each year we will develop 10 questions we want to push forward to create inclusive and sustainable culinary systems.
Led by professional multi-hyphenates Dr Anna Sulan Masing and Chloe-Rose Crabtree, the project takes an interdisciplinary approach to understand the intersection of culture and commerce in these systems. Our founders have a range of experience in restaurants, media and academic research and have created SOURCED to engage with a range of culinary professionals.
SOURCED is driven by the belief that food and drink are universal necessities, and the understanding that global culinary cultures develop according to unique histories, folklore and resource availability. SOURCED was created to see how we can broaden the way the culinary world is discussed and move it out from a narrative that prioritises a privileged Western/Global North experience.
Structured in seasons, SOURCED will focus on a topic of investigation for a few months at a time. The beginning of each season will be accompanied with the publication of a syllabus that will include a list of resources that inform the season's research.
Why Ingredients?
SOURCED wants to dismantle narratives that promote exclusion. Ingredients are an entry point for having bigger conversations about our individual relationships to food and drink.
SOURCED founders and collaborators are united in an effort to change the landscape of ‘experts’ in culinary spaces. Founders Anna Sulan and Chloe-Rose both hail from multi-heritage backgrounds, their interests in the food world have always been coloured by the relationship between identity and culinary practices.
We believe we can expand the dominant narrative on culinary culture if we start by understanding the ingredients we use. Our global food culture is a result of trade routes and human migration, it is multifaceted but it is rarely depicted outside of a Global North/Western perspective. When we start to examine ingredients, the threads of culinary, cultural, environmental and political conversations show themselves. In this research, we are examining these threads and constantly searching for ways to broaden representation of food cultures in media, academia and in kitchens.