Commensality is the feeling of fellowship when eating at the table with others. In a research context, commensality unveils dimensions of social relations between people, as well as human and non-human actors. We present an example of co-creating commensality, enacted with members of a local sustainable mar- ket association around their Annual General Meeting (AGM). We devised a suite of activities that we believed would generate social and cultural significance for the association members, as a pathway to fostering change. These activities used food as a design material, as well as research concern, and included: an inspirational talk by the CEO of a local vegan business; a mapping, envisioning and backcasting exercise; and a co-created dinner following the AGM. A driving intention in designing these activities was to support participants to leverage comensality as a way of infrastructure their development as agents of change.
Experiencing and Envisioning Food: Designing for Change contains papers on gastronomy, food design, sustainability, and social practices research as presented at the 3rd International Food Design and Food Studies Conference (EFOOD 2022, Lisbon, Portugal, 28-30 April 2022).