South Belfast
3 September 2024
Convened by Cecelia Graham
Dream Your Friends Forward was an experimental seminar that took the form of collective foraging and a subsequent syrup making session. The event was held alongside artists and chefs Phillip McCrilly and Moon Lee, and took place in South Belfast, namely Cherryvale Playing Fields and an alleyway in Rossmore Avenue on Tuesday 3 September 2024.
When planning Dream Your Friends Forward, we planned to create a session that enabled conversations
around working practices and alternative economies that exist within our local contexts. The act of foraging, and the creation of a subsequent drinking syrup, encouraged us to think about how we can observe and draw energy from the world around us, whilst encouraging sustainable approaches to foraging and the sharing of skills and drinks together. Together, we discussed how communities can come together to create tool libraries, whether it’s for arts-specific practice such as tech or for local needs such as kitchen equipment, and discussed examples of communities creating their own, non-monetary structures of economy. This included Phillip’s research into the Rose Hip Collectors’ Club and Eating Houses in Moy, Co. Tyrone and Moon’s experience working at Silo, a zero-waste restaurant ‘with no bin’ and the ritual of bringing rice cakes to new neighbours in South Korea as an act of friendship.
Dream your friends forward highlighted that research and learning doesn’t exist in a silo, whilst recognising the history of sharing that permeates contemporary artist practice, and the on-the-ground approaches that have paved the way for this knowledge.
