London Eats

London Eats was a year-long thematic collecting project within the Curating London programme. Running from May 2020 to July 2021, we focused on working with community organisations and engaged with many Londoners through our projects. Overall, we collected over 150 physical and digital objects for our collections of art, dress and textile, photography, oral history, digital, social and working history, and ephemera.

We selected ‘food’ as a theme because everyone has some relationship with it. Collecting on such a broad theme was bound to be limited, especially within a short time frame. The London Eats project engaged with 3,365 people, particularly those under-represented in London’s cultural scene, such as 16–25 year-olds and people from the global majority.

We consulted with over 500 people and organisations to develop a robust framework. Research also included looking at the exhibitions and engagement projects by other museums, and studying what our visitors told us about food over the last 10 years.

Building on this information, three collecting strands were identified: ‘Spaces and places’, ‘Food for thought’ and ‘Food cultures’. In total, we delivered 16 collecting projects, nine of which were led by community organisations.

As part of our food programme we had a free display at London Museum Docklands called ‘Feeding Black: Community, Power & Place’, from July 2021 to July 2022. This explored the central role food plays in Black enterprise and identity in south-east London. The project as a whole, and the physical exhibit’s location in London Museum Docklands’ London, Sugar & Slavery gallery provided an important and unique opportunity to reflect on modern food culture and existing legacies of London’s involvement in British trade in enslaved Africans.

From our research, it was clear that for most people, their relationship with food involved places where food might be purchased, consumed and enjoyed. Markets were one of the most frequently mentioned places of interest. While our collections are strong in historic markets such as Old Billingsgate, there was scope to collect others. This included New Billingsgate, which is due to leave its current location in the coming years. At New Billingsgate, we worked with artist-researcher Pat Wingshan Wong to document the fishmongers’ memories. We acquired her drawings from the market and collected oral histories recorded with, and objects donated by, the traders.

In another project, we worked with the owner of Y Ming, a well-regarded Chinese restaurant in Soho that closed in 2021 after 35 years. The team collected the restaurant’s sign, a photo album, a wok and other kitchen utensils. We also acquired a powerful set of photographs by Andy Sewell documenting the increased use of food banks in London.

The Capital Nourishment Fund was the museum’s first fully developed micro-grant scheme aimed at young Londoners, who each received a £1,000 grant, and training and support from London Museum staff. An open call invited young Londoners (aged 16–25) to pitch their ideas for collecting around London’s food and drink-related places and spaces. This micro-grant scheme brought in a much-needed perspective of young people to our collection.

The four successful projects covered a range of places: Pellicci’s, an Italian family-run café in east London; Vietnamese restaurants and takeaways on Deptford High Street; Indian family-run restaurants on Drummond Street; and the Kings Arms, one of Soho’s oldest gay bars and a landmark for London’s gay community.

The resulting three short films by Sara David, Theo Goff and Joseph England, Will Damarjian and Maz Murray are now part of the museum’s collection, as well as ephemera and a Kings Arms t-shirt. The micro-grant scheme also gave the grantees opportunities to share their achievements with the communities they worked with. For example, one of the films, To Drummond Street, With Love, was screened at the Camden People’s Theatre.

Through this strand, we wanted to explore the political issues around food and drink, from sustainability to class, disability, mental health, gender and liberty.

We worked with Paddock School, a special educational needs (SEN) school, to document the underexplored relationship that neurodiverse people have with food. As a result, we collected objects that were adapted by users, including a set of modified chopsticks and a hand-built pizza paddle.

‘We are what we eat’: an exploration of food in prison was a partnership project with the Art Group and Learning team at HMP Pentonville, working with the artist-researcher Guy Atkins. The project gave an honest, unfiltered account of prison food, highlighting issues such as poor-quality food and its link with mental health, and showcasing the use of food as currency – being exchanged for haircuts and other small luxuries. These were published in a booklet that you can download and explore.

Through this strand, we wanted to explore the legacy of migration on London’s food and drink traditions. What people cook is influenced not only by tradition but also by the culinary habits of their surroundings and ingredients available to them. We developed a project with St Anne’s and Guardian Angels Primary School and Spitalfields City Farm in east London to document children’s relationship with food. Through this, we collected four zines and a food diary. We also documented the work of Halal food influencers by collecting the museum’s first-ever Instagram reel and story video. Another project included working with Levant Book Café in Acton to document a Syrian ice-cream-making tradition by collecting a large pestle central to handmade booza.

The From the (Middle) South East to North West project aimed to map the travels and movements of a Syrian refugee family in search of traditional ingredients in London for their 2022 Eid celebrations. The project was delivered by researcher and creative practitioner Nabil Al-Kinani, who worked with the family for over a year, especially during the holy month of Ramadan.