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Food Stories: Food and Culture

A quick reminder of a site that I mentioned 6 months ago now: FOOD STORIES.

This is a site that I am preparing to use with groups in the next week or so...



One aspect of a country or a region that defines it is its FOOD.
This can be explored thanks to a new interactive site at the British Library site called FOOD STORIES.You'll need FLASH 8 to explore this site in full.

The site was put together in association with another, more involved, project called CULTURES OF CONSUMPTION (which has a nice barcode logo...) and is produced in association with Birkbeck College, University of London.

There's a very useful report on 4 and a half lessons learnt HERE (PDF download) and you can also download summaries of some of the RESEARCH PROJECTS.
There are also TEACHERS' NOTES, CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES and an INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS' NOTEBOOK to help students investigate the site.

There are useful short reports on a huge range of food related topics including:

* Chinese Restaurants and their impact on 1950s life
* Someone eating Indian food for the first time in the 1960s
* the politics of Caribbean food
* eating spaghetti for the first time

The site also looks at the rituals of food, school dinners and the impact of changing technology.
Also involved in the project was Peter Jackson from University of Sheffield, who is another person closely associated with consumption patterns. The FOOD STORIES site grew up out of a project to explore the PRODUCTION CHAIN.

I recommend the NOTEBOOK. This has some very useful approaches to how to use the site.

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