Cascoland’s Lab&Kitchen is back in Mexico!
Following up on the 2018 KEEPERS Lab&Kitchen pilot in Mexico, Cascoland and UNAM have now developed a 3-year transdisciplinary curriculum around the Collaborative Lab&Kitchen concept, actively involving students from the fields of biology, design, and social and humanitarian studies. Over the next years, three parallel case studies will be carried out in Xochimilco, Oaxaca and Chiapas.
By combining all these different expertises, the Collaborative Lab&Kitchen is a transdisciplinary effort to counteract the rapid and destructive process of deforestation in eastern Chiapas. We aim to transform agricultural practices in the area by stimulating reforestation and landscape restoration, while reconciling the – often mutually exclusive – practices of nature conservation with food production. This way, the project will benefit both the maintenance of the astonishing natural biodiversity and the communities living in the region.
Together, a transdisciplinary team of creatives, scientists and chefs will design and develop the Collaborative Lab&Kitchen as a flexible space for multi-functional use that will be managed by the local community. Imagine a research station surrounded by food forests and experimental gardens, with residency spaces for academics, designers and chefs, all centred around a semi-permanent (and mobile!) Lab&Kitchen where innovative diets and menus will be tested. In the future, we hope that our Lab&Kitchen will become a central hub in the area for social collaboration and knowledge exchange: a vibrant space for the co-creation of alternative ways of farming the forest.
We are excited to announce that the next phase of the Collaborative Lab&Kitchen will start on February 10th and last until March 20th in the small town of Loma Bonita, Chiapas. Here, researchers from UNAM and creatives from Cascoland will develop revolutionary ways of collaborating across and beyond disciplines, while simultaneously mobilising local communities to participate in the physical construction of the permanent Lab&Kitchen. We invite all of you to join us at the kitchen table!
Cascoland team
Fiona de Bell, Mariana Martinez Balvanera, Roel Schoenmakers, Anna Kooi, Teresa Borasino, Rob Sweere & Michaël Bloos
Michaël Bloos 