Cultural connection through cooking
As Spring slowly stutters in, and the dark months give way to more daylight, Giroscope celebrated the culmination of Comfort Food Encounters (CFE), part of a wider project, our Out On The Tiles programme.
During the winter months, seasonal illness increases across the UK. Households face rising heating costs and higher food prices, particularly for fresh produce. As a result, many families experience increased financial pressure and reduced food security. These challenges were felt even more acutely in Hull, where levels of deprivation and food poverty are significantly higher than the national average. Comfort Food Encounters was designed to respond to these pressures by supporting people in our area during these critical moments.
We wanted to give participants practical cooking skills, confidence and a sense of cultural connection, which strengthened everyday resilience in their domestic lives and beyond. Sharing knowledge was at the heart of the Comfort Food Encounters, making sure that the moments of social and culinary pleasure it provided were also accompanied by lasting change.
In Comfort Food Encounters festive cooking sessions brought together women from diverse cultural backgrounds within our neighbourhood. The sessions were led by two experienced community chefs who both support large families and maintain strong local connections: Fatiha, originally from Morocco, and Olha, originally from Ukraine.
Fatiha is from Fez, home to one of the largest medinas in Africa—a historic pilgrimage site and cultural crossroads shaped by centuries of trade, knowledge, and culinary tradition. Olha arrived in the UK as a refugee from Ukraine. Prior to displacement, she lived near the seaside and ran her own catering business as a chef, a practice which was disrupted by the war.
The project focused on comfort food recipes, chosen for their affordability, warmth, accessibility, and cultural relevance. Together, participants cooked a wide range of dishes, including Moroccan couscous, chorba soup, Ukrainian borscht, cabbage rolls, Ukrainian Easter cake, and a traditional Moroccan Afternoon Tea.
The project gave us a great pretext to collaborate with other local initiatives in our neighbourhood. Two of the sessions, chorba soup and cabbage rolls, were developed in collaboration with Waffle, a weekly pop-up restaurant held in the Lonsdale Community Centre. The Ukrainian Easter celebration was co-produced with Conquest of Bread Bakery and the Giroscope Community Garden. Embedding the project within existing community food networks in this way, Comfort Food Encounters strengthened local partnerships beyond the Hull residents that were touched and transformed by it.
Beyond cooking, each session became a space for storytelling and cultural exchange. Participants learned not only recipes but also the histories and lived experiences behind them—for example, how Moroccan couscous is traditionally prepared on Fridays while men attend mosque, and how it often becomes a moment of hospitality where neighbours and unexpected guests are welcomed to share a meal. These shared narratives deepened understanding of each dish, connecting food to memory, identity, and everyday life.
The project concluded with a Moroccan Afternoon Tea held at St Matthews Community Enterprise Centre, where participants gathered in a warm, welcoming, celebratory atmosphere. Many of the Moroccan women wore beautifully embroidered kaftans. The event centred around traditional green tea prepared with fresh mint and sugar, served in ornate teapots and decorative glasses, alongside a wide selection of homemade cookies and sweet treats, creating a rich, sensory moment of hospitality and togetherness.
Following the sessions, we produced a series of Riso-printed recipe zines, translated into multiple languages, documenting the recipes shared throughout the project. These were collectively assembled by the public during the closing celebration. Through the process of cooking together, we discovered how shared food practice can hold space for reflection, balance, and transformation during difficult times.
Out On The Tiles is supported by Hull City Council through the Community Recovery Fund, the Community Food Support Grant, and the Grant to Art programme.
The world changes quietly. Not in headlines. Not in debates. Not through shouting. But in kitchens. In letters. In ordinary conversations.
