Feast on the Bridge ran from 2007 to 2011 as part of The Mayor’s Thames Festival. For one Saturday each September Southwark Bridge was closed to traffic for an urban harvest meal enjoyed by over 35,000 people. The emphasis of the project wasn’t on spectacle, ownership or even entertainment, it was simply to explore the cyclical story of food production, reclaim the space from traffic and invite people to take part and share food and conversation.
Feast on the Bridge brought together an interdisciplinary team, from artists and campaigners, fishermen and archaeologists to poets, thatchers and chefs.
People baked bread, learnt to make mayonnaise, decorated cake, churned butter, foraged, gutted fish, made jam, told stories and proposed toasts. There was a mass fruit salad toss made from fruit destined for landfill, pop-up restaurants serving discard fish, a showcase of ethical food producers, local wine, music and dancing.
We collected all the food waste generated, experimented with anaerobic digesters and ran composting and wormery workshops. We tried grape treading, salad hats, apple bobbing, pumpkin carving and collected and illustrated thousands of personal food stories.
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Each year we ran an outreach programme growing heritage wheat and pumpkins, and creating mobile edible gardens with schools, community gardens and elders groups.
Commissioned by The Mayor’s Thames Festival. Designed by Cathy Wren, Produced for the Thames Festival by Kitty Ross, Illustrations by Sophie Herxheimer, Production Management by Neil Cooper and Jonathan Bartlett.
Artists included: Miche Fabre Lewin, Karen Wydler and Touchstone Trees, Konditor and Cook, Tom Hunt, Eloise Dey, Emily Elgar, Jenny Hayton, Zoe Bywater, Lottie Davis and the Toast Mesdames, Zoe Cameron and Damaris Booth, Eleanor Barrett, Simon Kane, Nigel Barrett, Haircut before the Party, The Bikini Beach Band, The City Shanty Band, Clare Brass, The London Recycling Network, Brockwell Bake, Toby Jones, Ayse Tashkiran, Mari Reijnders, Rachel Tweddell, Ryan Board, Richard Reynolds, Loowat, Rococo Chocolates, Okido, Alex Barrow, The Transiberian Marching Band, Alex Laird and Living Medicine, Miles Irving, Ceri Buck, Urban Wine Company, Rose Hamson, Caught by the River, hKippers, Severed Limb, Magnificent Revolution, Shazea Quraishi, Mike, Jeremy, Andrew Simms, Rosie Boycott, Robert Longstaff
Photos by Tim Mitchell and Barry Lewis
Artistic Director, Clare Patey
Read The Guardian article here
