Gaia Art Foundation is a supporter of CLIMAVORE Apprenticeship programme that was launched on 1st June 2019 with a celebratory weekend of activities including lunch at the Oyster table and walks exploring different aquatic zones and ecosystems.
CLIMAVORE explores how to eat as humans change climates. Initiated by Cooking Sections as a long-term project in 2015, it looks at forms of eating that respond to man-induced environmental transformations. On the Isle of Skye, CLIMAVORE: On Tidal Zones explores the environmental effects of intensive aquaculture and reacts to the polluted shores of the island.
Set on the intertidal zone at Bayfield, an oyster table provides the site for CLIMAVORE: On Tidal Zones. Each day at high tide, the installation works as an underwater oyster table inhabited by filter feeder bivalves and seaweeds that clean the water as they grow. At low tide, it emerges above the sea and functions as a table for humans. In collaboration with restaurants across the island, Cooking Sections are developing long term consumable visions and forms of eating that address environmental regeneration and promote more responsive aqua-cultures.
Since November 2018 students at Portree High School have trained to become CLIMAVORE Cooks. Through a series of oyster shucking and seaweed bread-baking workshops led by local chefs, foragers, scallop divers and Cooking Sections, students have learnt about the aqua-cultures along the tidal zones of Skye and food practices that can support them. During summer 2019 three graduates of the course have been awarded a CLIMAVORE Apprenticeship in restaurants across the island. Working in close collaboration with the corresponding chefs and kitchen teams, the CLIMAVORE Apprentices will develop, prepare and serve a CLIMAVORE menu to support alternative aqua-cultures which promote cleaner use of the tidal zone.
www.cooking-sections.com