About the Project
European project CONVIVIUM: Food Heritage, a new pillar of the New European Bauhaus programme
The CONVIVIUM - New European Bauhaus Solutions in Food, Living Heritage, and Conviviality project is the first successful application for funding by the University of Coimbra in a European bid opened specifically to promote the New European Bauhaus programme (launched in 2021). The researchers have 36 months (Nov. 2024 to Oct. 2027) to accomplish the two largest aims of the project: to grant the European Green Deal a cultural domain through the material, semiotic, and symbolic power of food; and to push towards the preservation of food heritage in accordance with the core tenets of the New European Bauhaus programme: beauty, sustainability, and inclusion.
The interdisciplinary and intersectional CONVIVIUM consortium – comprised of 20 partners in the public and private sectors across seven European countries (Portugal, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Belgium) – showcases a highly complementary profile as far as its fields of expertise are concerned. It covers the fields of the Humanities and Social Sciences; Architecture and Design; Arts and Creative Industries; and Tourism and Digital Technology.
Aware that the ecological crisis is a cultural one – meaning, a crisis that impacts the relationship between people and the life around them – CONVIVIUM seeks to foster ties of reciprocity, respect, and care between individuals and the environment. To that end, it proposes a set of solutions that value aesthetics, sustainability, and inclusion as food aspects that promote new ways to ecologically connect with the planet. Moreover: it revisits the concept of “conviviality,” understood as “reinforced socialisation,” as a product of a culture of cooperation, reciprocity, interdependence, and regeneration, extending the conventional definition of “community” beyond what is human. In other words, cultural heritage is extended as a “whole” that is shaped by heterogenous, interrelated beings or elements. Thus, the project’s motto draws inspiration from and amplifies the original meaning of the Latin term CONVIVIUM – meaning knowing how to live with all “others” (animate and inanimate, human, non-human, e beyond human).
The project develops Citizen Science research practices that hinge on positioning citizens as food heritage stakeholders, promoting the link between people and their local ecosystems.