Comfort Food
Immersive dinners, in partnership with Sonia Kneepkens
What does love taste like? What about fear? Or relief? You order your meal from a menu of carefully curated feelings. You start eating and hear a stranger’s voice. They tell you about what the dish you are eating means to them, and it makes them feel.
By the end of it, are they still a stranger?
‘Comfort Food’ builds on the old age wisdom that food brings people together. If food is a powerful social connector, can it also trigger empathy between two individuals with different life experiences? ‘Comfort Food’ aims to remind us that, in what is often described as the age of loneliness, eating can be a powerful act of social intimacy.
‘Comfort Food’ is a project by Fan Sissoko and Sonia Kneepkens. We create experiences that combine audio storytelling and food to bring people’s emotional memories to life. We run supper clubs and partner with charities to share interesting and intimate stories where food is a starting point for connection and empathy.
Past events
Comfort Food, Room to Breathe
Migration Museum UK, 2018
From a travelling cake to 750,000 fried eggs; stories of migration and resilience, bought to life on an animated dining table. Commissioned by the Migration Museum for their immersive exhibition Room To Breathe. The audio stories were animated by the talented Kate Anderson.
Festival selections:
BIAF 2019 Korea
Bay Area International Children's Film Festival 2020 US,
DocFeed 2020 Netherlands
Revolutions Per Minute 2020 US
Comfort Food, Home away From Home
National Trust London, 2018
For the National Trust London's latest exhibition 'Home away from home: the India Club', we ran a series of supper clubs. Around 100 guests joined us for an immersive evening to learn about the rich social history of one of the city’s most fascinating community spaces: The India Club. They experienced the personal stories of people who have called this place 'home' throughout the years with all their senses, while sharing memories and stories with their fellow table companions.
Comfort Food in Lockdown
In March 2020, as the world headed towards prolonged lockdowns and everything felt and was described as ‘unprecedented’, we started collecting stories from friends and strangers about the food they ate and the feelings they felt. We asked people to send us voice notes telling us how food helped them to feel connected to others during Covid times.
Listen to the audio stories
