The project created a safe space where people could come together, connect, cook with rescued food, and enjoy meals that carry a taste of home.
In the first year of the project, Trial&Error Kulturlabor regularly hosted the Soli Brunch, a meeting place for people affected by the war in Ukraine. In this safe space, they came together to get to know each other, cook with rescued food and enjoy traditional meals that reflect a piece of home. The Ukraine Soli Brunch provided an opportunity for participants to share their stories and experiences and find support in a community. Particularly for people from the Berlin-Tegel refugee centre, the brunch was a valuable opportunity to cook homemade food, as they had no cooking facilities of their own in the centre. Over the course of the project year, a regular group of committed people formed to prepare the Soli Brunch together with us.
The idea of cooking together continued at other project stations, where not only culinary experiences were shared, but also intergenerational connections were made. Different approaches to cooking, different family stories and the exchange of recipes from different parts of Ukraine created a space of contact with home. We also introduced the concepts of sharing and rescuing food by distributing it in the accommodation centres or cooking with it together. The table was set with a variety of rescued food, inviting us to cook creatively with what we had – an approach familiar to us from our ancestors, for whom zero waste food consumption was part of everyday life.
