By Éliana Vuillaume – Contributor

On Mar. 25, students, professors, farmers, community members and several key political actors, gathered to share an evening envisioning what future sustainable food systems could look like.

The event started off in the lobby of the Centennial Theater at Bishop’s University with a panel discussion during which farmers, researchers, and food innovators gathered to discuss different challenges that local and global food systems are facing. As she introduced the panelists during the opening words of the event, Dr. Vivian Valencia, Research Chair in Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Action and professor at Bishop’s University, talked about an article in The Guardian that inspired her to organize the event in collaboration with BU Arts Festival. The article was about an event called the Last Supper: a meal curated by a former White House chef, Sam Kass that explored different dishes and foods whose futures are at risk because of climate change.

This, along with a visioning exercise held last September with fellow researchers,

artists, farmers, restaurants owners and other key community members, inspired her to

create a methodology for inspiring change and reimagining the food system.

“We realized that people are not getting mobilized because it’s not necessarily that you need to show them more data or more statistics or another scientific paper.

That’s not changing people’s minds, or at least not mobilizing them to action” she

explained in an interview. “So that’s when we felt that we needed to do something that

reached people at a deeper level, not just an intellectual cognitive level.”

Following the panel discussion, attendees and guests were invited to visit and admire the art installation held in the Foreman Gallery. The installation was created by artist curator Marie-Pierre Ranger and artist Faustine Escoffier, who started working on the installation of the art in the middle of January.

“We [Marie-Pierre and I] wanted to create a sensory experience in art

installations”. Using sound recordings, textures, fabrics and real objects guests and

visitors interacted with the art installation in different ways, whether it was by walking

among the roots hanging from the ceiling or sitting down at a table and writing a

reflection with natural dyes.

Later that evening, sixty guests, including researchers, students, community actors, and political actors, stayed for the second part of the event, the actual supper.

The First Supper was carefully curated by Dr. Vivian Valencia and Marc-Antoine

Joncas Zarate, co-owner of Terroirs Restaurant. The menu that he and Dr. Vivian

Valencia worked on was meant to tell a story and explain an important aspect of the

food system.

For this, each dish part of the four-course meal was designed to promote local produce but also raise people’s awareness: “It was also not only to provide a creative food service, but also a way to make people react and take a position about it [local produce]”, Marc-Antoine Joncas Zarate explained.

So, what happened when art, food and science are brought together to promote

a more sustainable local food system?

“It connects very well… I think it’s the basics [art and agriculture] of our communities”, expressed the Hon. Marie-Claude Bibeau, P.C., M.P., former Minister of

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and current member of The House of Commons for Compton-Stanstead, who was among the guests present at the First Supper. “It’s who we are. What you eat and what you read and what you dance. And it makes us think more about our food sovereignty.”