Field Notes from a Preservation Station - Incite at Columbia University

Incubated Project

Field Notes from a Preservation Station

Field Notes from a Preservation Station is a Chicago-based initiative that treats food preservation as a public health imperative. This project addresses two interconnected challenges: the loss of traditional food knowledge and ongoing food insecurity. By bringing people together around the practice of food preservation, this project creates space for meaningful exchange—where techniques are taught, stories are shared, and wisdom passes between generations.

Through hands-on workshops and community gatherings, participants learn preservation methods while building connections with their neighbors. The sessions preserve food for times of need and safeguard cultural knowledge that's at risk of disappearing. The initiative will culminate in a guide, ensuring that these vital skills and stories nourish generations to come.
 

Team Lead

  • Lori Parett

    Lori Parrett is an artist and cultural practitioner exploring food as memory, craft, and survival. She is the founder of Cakewalk Chicago and the architect of ForkLore, a public preservation kitchen model building community resilience. Her work blends visual art, culinary technique, and social practice.

More Projects

  • go to Street Seen
    Street Seen
    Creating cultural programming for and by unhoused people in San Diego. Part of Assembling Voices
  • go to Transforming Health Visual Culture
    Transforming Health Visual Culture
    Documenting Black and brown women's maternal experiences through photography to transform visual culture in healthcare spaces across Massachusetts. Part of the Left Field Fund
  • go to Terra:Soul
    Terra:Soul
    Environmental storytelling with the concept of reciprocity at its core.
  • go to We Be Imagining
    We Be Imagining
    Applying the Black radical tradition to the development of public interest technology. Funded by the Board of Trustees of the American Assembly