Julie Kinnaird | October 24, 2017
Every three years the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chooses a university-wide common theme to call on the campus and all of its members and resources to mobilize around a common issue facing our society. This year the theme is Food for All: Local and Global Perspectives. World View is dedicated to supporting this initiative and has incorporated it into our K-12 global education symposium, Human Rights and Social Justice.
This year World View will receive a grant to help support the integration of the theme into the symposium and with it we are excited to bring Conflict Kitchen to Chapel Hill! Our symposium will feature keynote talks as well as smaller sessions on human rights issues and on different pedagogical strategies for integrating human rights and social justice issues into teaching. There will be a keynote talk on Conflict Kitchen, a session to address food as a human rights issue and a workshop providing resources or strategies to use food as a bridge for global understanding in the classroom.
Conflict Kitchen, a non-profit organization in Pittsburgh, began as a restaurant that served cuisine from countries with which the United States is in conflict, in a way that used the social relations of food and economic exchange, to engage the public in discussions about countries, cultures and people that they might know little about.
Today Conflict Kitchen co-founders provide lectures and workshops that help educators use food and innovative storytelling to spark important dialogue and provide a framework for learning about countries and cultures, while allowing perspectives and histories to be shared and valued. Co-founder and artist Dawn Weleski will join us at the symposium on October 26-27 to provide a keynote talk, a workshop, an exhibit, and facilitate a Conflict Kitchen-themed lunch for over 200 participants and members of the UNC community. Weleski will incorporate the ingredients from the lunch menu into her talk and discuss the cuisines and cultures of the regions of the world they are from. Over lunch participants will try new foods, meet new friends, and engage in dialogue about world regions and global issues.