A tasting workshop exploring migration, food appropriation, diaspora, and notions of home through shared flavours, stories, conversation, and collective reflection.
Emerging from anthropological research into food and politics in the SWANA region and diasporic communities in the UK, Blessed Hands invites participants to reflect on questions of authenticity, memory, movement, and cultural inheritance through the act of tasting together.
Led by Dr Michal Nahman and joined by artist, facilitator, and composer Aisha Ali, the session will include a short introduction, food tasting, discussion, and shared exploration of how food carries histories of migration, displacement, survival, and belonging.
Tastings may include dishes such as bean stew, rose jam, bread, olive oil, and za’atar.
Michal’s research traces her own family heritage from the Spanish expulsion of Jews and Muslims through Italy, Greece, and Turkey, and connects to her wider work with the Land Stories Collective in Bristol, supporting food and land education, justice, and solidarity with Palestine and South Lebanon.
Aisha brings experience working across performance, music, activism, and community food projects, including Speak & Eat — a cookery and ESOL programme supporting refugees and asylum seekers through shared food and language.