Food Heritage Trail development underway

China Exchange volunteers are continuing to contribute to our work on heritage and community while building their skills. The Food Heritage Trail project has been up and running since our first training weekend in July, where volunteers  learned heritage gathering  techniques. Since then they have been busy collecting and documenting food heritage stories and processes. Volunteers have experienced different foods around the area and had the chance to talk with some people from the Chinatown business community, who shared and confirmed prominent information and suggestions for our printed trail map.

Throughout this process, our volunteers had the opportunity to join Dora’s Lam Made in Chinatown workshop in August. Dora is especially interested in using contemporary art practices to mine, construct and preserve more nuanced forms of cultural heritage. The workshop was focused on creating clay dumplings while sharing food experiences and memories that relate to London’s Chinatown.

Volunteers are focusing currently on the design of the trail map and gathering the stories they documented. Through regular Zoom meetings, they have been able to share their ideas and skills to help develop the project, but are also lucky enough to experience gatherings in-person where we can discuss ideas and experiences.

The Food Heritage Trail is a project that will bring to life a printed food trail map designed and written by the volunteers that shows the hidden stories, meaning and heritage of London’s Chinatown. The trail will be marked using vinyl window stickers with a printed map in different places around the area and is due to be installed before the end of 2021.

 This project is part of our 2021 work to Champion Chinatown Heritage funded by our successful Spacehive crowdfunding campaign.