Forage to Feast is a series of seasonal edible adventures that sees a collaboration between renowned forager and environmental artist Diego Bonetto and stylist, designer, foodie and weed convert Marnee Fox. 

Building on Diego's much-loved wild food foraging workshops, the pair bring the food found on a foraging tour to the table.
The experience begins with a wander along a river or by the beach highlighting the abundance of native and non native edibles to be found underfoot.
With new found eyes for the ingredients around us we make our way to a long table nested amongst a magical setting for a delicious mini degustation utilising many of the species discussed.
With this experience Marnee and Diego want to re-ignite appreciation for the abundant supply of edible species everywhere.

In a tongue-and-cheek performative event, the couple reconnect walkers with the old knowledge that we all enjoyed up to three generations ago.
The event brings out stories, old tricks and games, new data and ethical possibilities together in a fun and delicious concerto of flavours, laughs, textures and curiosities. This is storytelling at its most experiential level, allowing for candid engagement with ancient relationships.

These are leave-no-trace events fostering respect and appreciation for what nature offers us .

See here for the latest offerings and below for some images of past ones>>

A seven-part narrative to learn and connect with ecology and the wilder you.

Belonging- An ode to weeds is part of 52 ACTIONS, an online commissioning platform by Artspace Sydney, supporting artists living and working in Australia through the development and presentation of new works. 

Throughout 2020-21 when cultural experiences were taking place at a physical distance, 52 ACTIONS speculated on new methods for survival and revival, offering a space for artists and audiences to continue sharing and connecting with one another. This evolving project centres around the social and cultural importance of artistic practice and art as action in times of uncertainty and transformation.

Each week for a year a different participant presented a new commission on the Artspace website and across digital platforms – from live performance to photography and video, sound and text-based work to interventions, digital public programs and more.

The resulting 52 commissions have now embarked on a national tour where you will experience the videos and artwork made by the artists though out 2022-23.

See here for the latest stop of the tour.

 Wildfood.store  is a marketplace for wild harvested produce. The project is now dormant as Covid-19 changed the rules of the game in the catering industry.

In the two years that it was operational I harvested and sold in excess of $15k of wild foraged botanicals to the catering industry of Sydney. 

The project originated as a provocation seeking to fully investigate the economic and social returns of setting up a hub for the marketing of the by-products of our environmental management systems: weeds.
See a video about the origin story here>

In the years working with the catering industry as a foraging instructor and with regional communities via my involvement with Kandos School Of Cultural Adaptation, it became apparent that there is a missed business opportunity between the availability of wild edible plants and the demand in the city for organic, foraged produce.

Part social experiment, part economic provocation, the project unfolded into several events reaching out to farmers and bringing weekly delivery of produce to the kitchens and bar of the city.

Have a look at this Instagram feed for some of the resulting exchanges or this produce list for the type of plants that showed commercial potential.

The project was underpinned by community-activating workshops in collaboration with chefs and distributors, in order to define key staple produce that could form the basis for an ongoing relationship between rural and city food economies. An integral part of the project was the stories about people living on the land, exploring changing relationship with the environment, and indigenous and exotic traditional relationships to plant species.

Wildfood Store has now paired down from weekly delivery to event-driven collaborations.

Get in contact if you have ideas, want to work together on an event or have solid start-up skills to get this opportunity rolling again.

Groundswell was a three days festival organised by Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation (KSCA) as a partnership event with Pulse of the Earth, organised by The Living Classroom in Bingara, NSW, Regional Australia.

Across rural NSW, people are adapting to our changing environment and climate. They are regenerating landscapes, reshaping the food system, and using ingenious methods – old and new – to harness natural resources and protect vulnerable ecosystems. 

Since early 2018, nine artists embarked on three years project, An artist, a farmer & a scientist walk into a bar... and with eight distinctive propositions have been engaging with regional communities, farmers and scientists through a world of creativity and resourcefulness. Their collaborations bridge different perspectives on agriculture, soil, Aboriginal country, carbon, solar energy and wild foods. 

Groundswell invited the public to engage with the artists, collaborators and some incredible speakers who expanded on the ideas explored in the projects. The program featured talks, walks, food, film, demonstrations, performances and installations. Groundswell was a ‘forum in the field’ and spread over several acres of land at The Living Classroom, a site for land-based learning on Bingara’s reclaimed town commons. 

Alongside the artists, the following speakers presented:

• Keynote: Charles Massy (farmer, educator, author of Call of the Reed Warbler)

• Erika Watson and Hayden Druce (Epicurean Harvest farmers)

• Rachel Lawrence (agroecologist and aspiring potter)

• Sarah Burrows & Anita Taylor (founders of Red 8 Produce, a mobile ethical abattoir start-up)

• Tim Cavagnaro (soil ecologist, University of Adelaide)

• Ian Milliss (KSCA artist and Cultural Adaptation muse)

• Ananth Gopal (actor and Director of Polykala, facilitator of individual, community, organisational adaptation)

• Sharon Windsor (entrepreneur, founder of Indigiearth)

• David Hardwick (agroecology educator, partner Soil Land Food)

• Lee Fieldhouse and Kirsty Hughes (Island Biologicals, vermiculture innovators - yes, worms!)

• Bjorn Sturmberg (solar scientist, ANU and renewable energy entrepreneur)

• New England Landcare (coordinated by Sara Schmude)

• Glenn Morris (organic farmer, climate change activist)

• And… Adam Blakester as MC! (sustainability facilitator, founder Starfish Initiatives)

An artist, a farmer & a scientist walk into a bar… is an initiative of the art collective KSCA (Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation), and builds upon KSCA’s successful 2016 event Futurelands2. It is being staged in partnership with Cementa Inc., The Living Classroom, Starfish Initiatives and Arts North West, and is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW. 

Foragers, Weed Gardens and Gatherings (FWG) was a community based art project about untapped resources and new ways of coming together. Through a series of community focused HOW TO workshops, gatherings, expeditions, exchanges and art events across October, FWG unearthed, explored and celebrated contemporary and historical knowledge and use of local, native and imported vegetables, flowers, greens, weeds and their use. By revaluing the use of untamed areas and the foods that grow there, and by fostering local networks and local knowledge within artistic frameworks, FWG will cultivate new understandings and lived knowledge of ones environment to support well-being and reignite a sense of value, purpose, collectivity and cohesion within the cultural diversity of Semaphore.

FWG has been initiated and guided by local community members, participating artists and OSCA who have been gardening out of St Bedes Community Garden since 2015.

A final event entitled FINDERS SHARERS, at the St Bede’s Garden, Semaphore on the 12th of Nov brought together the workshop outcomes and locally sourced food stocks alongside participants working across sustainable urban practices of food, nutrition, fashion and art production in an inaugural Spring community gathering and celebration. 

This project is supported by The Australian Council and the City of Port Adelaide Enfield through its Community Grants program.

The best place to forage is your own back-yard – Diego Bonetto

WHATCH THE VIDEO INTERVIEWS WITH PARTICIPATING ARTISTS BELOW

Join the Liverpool Food Fight

We believe everyone has the right to access fresh, nutritious, affordable and culturally appropriate food.

Food Fight was a live art event held in Bigge Park, Liverpool designed to raise awareness about food security and access for everyone in the South Western Sydney areas.
 
Led by contemporary artists Diego Bonetto and Branch Nebula, in partnership with the MCA's C3West Program and Liverpool City Council, this collaborative project brought together a range of “food heroes” and “food warriors” from the local community, including students from Liverpool Girls’ High School, community kitchen volunteers, food advocates, top cooks and performers.

Ongoing Public Program

Artist Educators from the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia worked closely with students from Liverpool Girls High School during ‘Food Fight’, exploring food security and the power of contemporary art. This video captures a subsequent program in 2017, which built on the themes and activities of ‘Food Fight’.

For more information visit /c3west/food-fight-battle-food-security/

How can I help?

The event might be over but the fight for food security isn't. Donate your time, money or spare food to any number of excellent organisations working to ensure access to affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food for everyone. We've listed just a few below.

Inspire Community

Led by Food Warrior Pastor Mick Agius, Inspire Community provides vital food relief and community services across South West Sydney, including the Liverpool Community Kitchen and Hub. 

Foodbank

Foodbank are the major provider of food for relief services across Australia, acting as a conduit between the food sector's surplus food and the welfare sector's needs.

OzHarvest

Wcollects quality excess food from more than 2,000 commercial outlets and delivers it, direct and free of charge, to more than 800 charities

Youth Food Movement

Led by Food Warrior Alexandra Iljadica, this national volunteer-led organisation aims to build the skills, knowledge and experience that young people have around food.

Food facts & figures

- Nearly one million Australian kids go without breakfast or dinner.

- Two million Australians rely on food relief every year, half of them children.

- 6.2% of households had 'run out of food and could not afford to buy more' in the last 12 months.

- In the meantime, Australians throw out one of every five shopping bags of food.

Learn more about Food Security

See images from the night here>

FOOD FIGHT: the book. Available here>

BIG FAG PRESS is Sydney's own artist-run printing collective. The BIG FAG is a beautiful offset-lithographic proofing press that can produce excellent quality prints up to B1 size.

Currently hosted in a City of Sydney Supported Accommodation venue in Glebe, NSW.
Past projects include Green Bans Art Walk, Big Fag Dance and offered various residencies with established and emerging artists.

More info at www.bigfagpress.org

This project consisted of a bus (or bike) tour of the inner Sydney suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo. The tour highlighted particular sites which were threatened by the Redfern Waterloo Authority's plan to "revitalise" the area.

Each tour lasted 4-5 hours, and tourists were addressed by various representatives of the local community - for example, from the Aboriginal Housing Company, the local Indigenous Women's Centre, the Settlement Community Centre, the REDWatch activist group, architects, designers, and the Indigenous Social Justice Association.

Each speaker presented his/her perspective on the rapidly gentrifying suburb. The tour asked: what was to be lost and what was to be gained by the process of urban transformation? How could it be done better? And how would it affect people on the ground?

About 15 tours were run during the period 2005-2009.

The Tour of Beauty operated as a piece of aesthetic activism, providing a complex but concrete experience of urban, social and architectural dynamics. The Tour was a plug-in for various conferences, exhibitions and visiting study groups. It was the catalyst for meetings between Indigenous and white activists in Sydney, and led to many spin off projects, the most visible being the large-scale exhibition event There Goes the Neighbourhood (2009), co-curated by SquatSpace's Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg.

Wild Food Map (2013-16)was a plant knowledge and networking tool with a global overview of how people engage with plants and resources in the public and private domain. It provided immediate access to citizen data embedded in an online map, instantly applicable to the user’s surroundings. It offered an alternative for people to re-engage with their neighbourhoods, streets and footpaths through edible adventures.

Wild Food Map is now discontinued

We achieved the mapping of over 300k of #wildfood instances, but is now time to let it go.
Look out for more initiatives form the team in the near future.

Wild Food Map provided a platform to rethink the way we engage with our surroundings and look at ways our consumption of plant materials impacts our environment and biodiversity.

The audience
Wild Food Map was a global plant community where gardeners, foragers, growers, restaurants, chefs and bush crafters were able to locate plants, share knowledge and find resources related to useful, edible and medicinal plant species.
The platform facilitated real-world discovery, identification and learning, while fostering a network of producers, suppliers and consumers to promote and exchange plants, seeds, food and services.

Our modest team achieved a lot since our inception in 2013, creating a mapping system and knowledge base of wild food and plant sources for everyone to access, for free. This came thanks to people like:

Warren Armstrong - App Developer, New technologies adventurer. Warren is a busy man, coding IRL apps like (Un)Seen Sculptures and lately crafting the inner works of Galaxy of Suns. He's good. His work on Wildfood.in is the current Android Beta and PHP back-end. His day job is with CHOICE,  a consumer goods reviews and testing service.

Salla Mankinen - Online Architect, App Developer. Salla left the corporate world to continue her passion projects, coding for good with a Not For Profit based in Cambodia, along with her incredible suite of language apps. Salla created the wildfood.in  front-end, REST API (AngularJS/Node.js) and MongoDB backend among many other soon to be implemented treats for the wildfood community.

Adrian O'Doherty - Digital Producer, Conceptual and Creative Developer. The ideas man behind a long list of ventures, collectives, projects and brands. Adrian is a Co-founder of wildfood.in working tirelessly across the board.

Diego Bonetto - Environmental Educator, Artist, wild food nerd. Diego talks and walks people around to teach them about plants and the ways they can engage with wild food species. Diego is the front man,  heart and soul, and co-founder of wildfood.in. His adventures 'in the weeds' has taken wildfood.in to Gore-Tex, Radio National, Australian Tourism, Good Food and a restaurant, university, council, park or garden near you...

 Karli Hindmarsh -Teacher, food expert, copy editor.  Karli has been combing the plant database for language and fact checking. Co-author of the media content repository that is World Wide Weeds and Karli Eat to Live.

Joey Astorga - Plant based chef extraordinaire.  The man in the kitchen at El Capo, In The Annex, Sadhana and his new venture Alfie's Kitchen. Joey is just one of the many people in the Food and Hospitality industry to throw their support behind some unforgettable wildfood.in events.

Our contributors and supporters were a diverse crowd including institutions, business owners, gardeners, writers, filmmakers, photographers, musicians, artists, interns, students and academics.

Between 2013 and 2016 Wild Food Map achieved first suggestion position in Google Play for tag searches like wild food, food map, wild map, foraging wild food map, foraging food map and foraging.

See here for an article by Laura Fisher on Axon about the project and its legacy.

Urban spaces are home to some of the most varied and thriving ecosystems in Australia and Alderley’s streets and yards are no exception. The Beasts of Alderley celebrates these places and the lifeforms that inhabit them in an unforgettable journey deep into the wild heart of Brisbane. Learn of interspecies relationships and discover stories of accidental immigration, long distance romance, bitter conflict and perfect co-dependence. Perhaps the wilderness isn’t so far away after all? 

The Beasts of Alderley is a permanent public artwork made up of 12 illustrated panels, each describing organisms with whom we cohabit. The project reminds us that urban environments are more than just human worlds and are a part of the dynamic, evolving, complex ecosystems. From the tiny inhabitants of the human digestive tract through to the impressively large mounds of leaf litter made by the famous brush turkey, the Beasts of Alderley Wilderness Trail passes through the fascinating habitats and describes the controversies that go with them. With an exciting itinerary for the adventurous, this project rethinks what is wilderness. 

Beasts of Alderley is a collaborative artwork by artists Diego Bonetto, Tega Brain and Mark Gerada, commissioned by the Brisbane City Council and with input from the local community of Alderley. See here for more details> 

Let it be Wild is outdoor sculptural garden part of "WATCHING CLOUDS PASS THE MOON " at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery 

How beautiful it is to roll down a hill, to collect a flower and to harvest a berry from a laden bush. Such prospects of interactions with nature are common in our psyche, literature and behavioural lexicon. But how much of it is a reality for our younger generations?

In 1998, American botanists James Wandersee and Elizabeth Schussler defined plant blindness as "the inability to see or notice the plants in one's own environment," which brings the "inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere and in human affairs." This happens in an age when most youngsters can identify hundreds of corporate logos and branded products but can't name the plants and trees in their backyards.

With Let it be Wild I am presenting a provocation, and a learning arena. A place where guests can reacquaint themselves with common plants that surround us everyday, and yet we do not see. With Let it be Wild you will be guided into an experiential journey, filled with visuals, smells, sensations and flavours.

Step in, you might reconnect to a wilder you. 

A collaborative project with Tega Brain and Mark Gerada, commissioned by the City of Sydney for the 2012 Laneways Public Art Program

For this collaborative project we presented a national park’s style self guided tour of the wilderness of the city with a series of info-panels. The toungue-n-cheek work wanted to shift perspectives from the assumption that cities are void of nature, paying attention to the species which successfully call a city home and live along side humans. Indeed an urban environment is one of the most diverse environments, allowing for a surprising density and variety of non-human species. As part of the temporary artwork we also offered a series of guided tours, where faux rangers provided for a fun and informing walk in the laneways of Sydney.

As it read: 

Take an unforgettable journey deep into the wild heart of Sydney. Join our expert wildlife guides and discover rats, bugs, birds and bankers in their fascinating city habitats.

The City Wilderness Trail is a distributed public art project that acknowledges the city as host to an incredible diversity of non-human populations. Our wildlife researchers have created an urban trail that draws attention to fifteen different bird, mammal and insect species that live in the CBD. Signs are hidden throughout the laneways and spaces along George Street.

Our urban environments are more than just human worlds yet we often approach other urban species with disgust or negative feelings. This project celebrates urban biodiversity as something of value that should be welcomed and designed for. Instead of approaching nature as something that is ‘out there’, the City Wilderness Trail presents the natural world as a dynamic, evolving and complex system of which our cities and societies are actually an important part.

Other links here>

SquatFest happened every year  from 2001 to 2010, at the same date and time as TropFest. While the hopeful entrants for TropFest are fretting about whether they'll get the chance to move up a rung in the Hollywood Sweatshop, artists and activists from 'round Australia are living it up, projecting films and videos in an inspiring squatted venue. 

SquatFest began at the Broadway Squats in 2001, and has since made appearances at the Midnight Star Social Centre, the Sydney Park Brickworks, the Sydney Dental Hospital, under the grandstand at Esrkineville, and many other amazing venues! Our film programmes have toured to Newcastle, Melbourne, Perth, and Indonesia.

Check out a site by some friends of ours, dedicated to the history of SquatFest here(that site uses Macromedia Flash, let us know if you have troubles viewing it!)