About the Project:
The UCF Cultural Heritage Alliance recently completed a unique service-learning project focusing on foodways (customs and practices associated with food preparation and sharing) among African-American and Afro-Caribbean residents of the Parramore district of Orlando, Florida. The project, entitled "Community Stories: Documenting African American Heritage and Life in Central Florida," was funded by a CHESP (Community/Higher Education/School Partnership) grant.
As part of this project, students at Orange Center Elementary and Jones High School created artwork based on traditional foods and eating customs in their neighborhoods. Local artists including Mark Goldthwaite and Julia West visited Orange Center Elementary and Jones High School to lead workshops during which students created artwork about foodways. This artwork involves multiple media including mosaics and writing. Several different approaches have been used: making three-dimensional representations of favorite and traditional meals, creating potato-stamp borders with food narratives in the middle and constructing "mosaics" of favorite foods.
Another component of the project involved folklore fieldwork workshops led by UCF Film Department students at Jones High School and Orange Center Elementary. Students at these schools learned how to interview people in their community about traditional foods and food-related customs. They collected stories and recipes from community residents as well as each other during the course of the project.
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About Foodways:
What are foodways and why focus on them? There are a number of components of foodways, including: what, when and how food is eaten, how to prepare, preserve and present food, and regional and ethnic food terms, beliefs and customs. Food traditions are particularly intriguing because they are some of the most persistent of folk (ethnic or other group) traditions. Psychologists and social scientists believe that food and language are the cultural traits people learn before anything else, and the ones that are changed with the most difficulty. Even after language has been lost to acculturation (after immigrants settle in a new location), however, food traditions often remain as a way to bind generations together. This means that food often becomes tied to cultural identity.
What is distinctive about foodways in Parramore?
Parramore is an area of
Orlando with a historically predominant African-American population.
Recently a sizeable number of Black Caribbean immigrants have
settled there as well. Foodways in Parramore include a combination
of Southern cooking (soul food), Caribbean dishes and mainstream
American meals like pasta and fast food. For example, chicken
is a central ingredient in many recipes and might be eaten
as Southern fried chicken, Haitian chicken with rice or fast
food "buffalo" wings. Explore the Parramore Foodways
Recipe
Book.
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