Our prototype of collaborative kitchen opened its door

Why prototyping?
The Tast’in Fives project aims at opening an original building dedicated to food, enabling to fight poverty through a multifactorial approach: social mixity, popular education, training, and economic development. Such infrastructure takes time to be built: the building will only be able to host activities in 2019 at the end of the 3 years.
In order to implement our program of activities, and more over in order to prepare and prefigure the uses of our future equipment, we imagined a micro-project in which we could test and communicate about the TAST’in Fives project.

What is it?

© Atelier 204
This micro-project is an open area of 1500 m² inside of the Fives Cail brownfield. It includes 3 pop-up buildings:
-    A 28 m² shared office for the partnership;
-    A 40 m² urban farming container + greenhouse;
-    A 110 m² kitchen/meeting room, able to receive up to 75 people, called Pavillon Gourmand.

It is open during the week to visitors, and the kitchen can be used by anyone (NGO, schools, inhabitants, economic activities…) if its respects the ambitions and criterions of the TAST’in Fives project.

What is going on?

Extract from the agenda, two weeks after opening. In violet, what happens in the office. In yellow, activities of the “Pavillon Gourmand”. In green, activities organised out the site.
Almost every day, project managers of the partnership come to work on site. There, they can informally exchange upon their objectives and activities, and they can observe what is currently taking place. They are therefore linked to the overall activities and have a weekly meeting.
Activities take place mostly in the “Pavillon Gourmand”, and they are of all kinds:
-    A classroom’s final event after a series of workshops: cooking together a complete lunch;
-    A local NGO’s annual event, gathering members for working session and convivial shared lunch and dinner;
-    A event combining distribution of cultural presents, and a workshop to prepare gingerbread;
-    A group of kids and their German teacher  gather to cook German Christmas cookies;
-    Meeting with partners or with Municipality services in order to communicate about the project and to encourage them to co-organize events.
-    …
Soon, the Urban Farm will be able to produce locally grown crops!
Last but not least, parts of the works on the external site were made thanks to open works, with the help of several inhabitants. This is going to happen again all along the site’s life.
 

Who is benefitting from these actions?

A class of CM1 (8/9 years old) from a nearby school cooks lunch.

A researcher in social sciences is present most of the time to analyse the impact of these activities and to evaluate the target groups: he should release in spring 2018 a first intermediary report of its questionnaires.
After one month, more than 400 persons benefited from the “Pavillon Gourmand” (these figures do not integrate workshops and activities lead outside of the site). Among them, a great mixity of publics:
-    Children and teenagers from the neighbouring schools;
-    Beneficiaries of local NGOs;
-    Employees of the Municipality discovering the place.

Communication as a lever to attract more public
Together with these built prototypes, the partnership has released several communication canals:
-    a specific blog
-    a Facebook page
-    small “postcards” leaflets to explain the general idea and the localisation;
-    last but not least: street contact – our team takes the street with a homemade cake and leaflets, and distribute them at the supermarket or house by house, to inform directly the inhabitants!