SAVE THE DATE! 4 – 18 July 2023
Following the success of the 2022 event and with sponsorship secured through 2025, Food Dialogues continues to build post-Covid momentum with Food Dialogues 2023 scheduled to take place over 15 days at venues across Cape Town, from Tuesday 4 to Tuesday 18 July 2023.
Given the enormous impact of Covid-19 on our food systems, and the incredible ways in which civil society responded to this impact to support communities in need, Food Dialogues 2023 will dedicate space to an analysis of this impact, and to what extent our food systems have been changed by the pandemic, for better and for worse, and what that changes means for the future.
There will be other deep explorations: Food Dialogues 2023 will explore food and climate change, food and teenage health, and food and big business. People and organisations wishing to join the dialogue on these themes are welcome to connect at hello@fooddialogues.info.
And there will also be plenty of fun events! As in Food Dialogues 2022, there will be plenty of eating events, allowing us to find and share our common humanity over meals in different parts of the city. A big focus will be food and faith, with inter-faith dining events curated across the city. Kids will get in on the action too, with food adventures for parents and children to enjoy together.
Food Dialogues 2023 will see the addition of some purely virtual events, opening the conversations up to participants and panelists outside of Cape Town.
The food systems art exhibition at the V&A Waterfront that began as a small experiment in 2022, will grow up in 2023 in the hands of an art curator.
And walking tours will feature again, using the landscape of the city and the township to unpack spatial and historic food systems.
Further details of Food Dialogues 2023, as they are revealed, will be available at http://www.fooddialogues.info and across social media channels.
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Food Dialogues is hosted by the SA Urban Food & Farming Trust with co-host and sponsor SOLVE@Waterfront.
Co-sponsored by the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security, event partners include the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership, African Centre for Cities, the Southern Africa Food Lab, The Oranjezicht City Farm Market, Bertha House, Philippi Village, City of Cape Town, Western Cape Government and Derrick Integrated Communications.
View Previous Food Dialogues: 2014 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022
“Food Dialogues can contribute towards us thinking about new ways of doing things, and learning, even if we’re learning from people that we don’t agree with.”
Prof. Julian May, Director, DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security.
“The Food Dialogues provided a space to engage deeply in the complexity of the Cape Town food system. They refused to have a single story. They refused to amplify a single set of voices. They provide the starting point, and not the end point, for many sets of complex, difficult and messy conversations about food.”
Jane Battersby, Assoc. Prof., African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town.
“The Food Dialogues are critically important because they provide a rare opportunity for citizens and other stakeholders to learn from grassroots activists alongside government officials, university professors, and business people. Only by connecting these different perspectives and knowledges will we able to foster meaningful change in our food systems.”
Prof. Julian May, Director, DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security
SA Urban Food & Farming Trust 