After a busy summer of Side by Side activity, Feel Good Family Picnics and a host of other events throughout Rochdale to celebrate its status as Greater Manchester City of Culture – we reconvened with the community curator group. It was an opportunity to share our experiences of hosting No Such Thing, sharing a meal and a conversation with a stranger, and reignite our ambitions for the Dining Room to be a space of coming together, learning about other cultures and sharing in the joy of food and cooking.
Moving forward over the next year, we will be focusing on different aspects of The Dining Room in focused groups. We will be exploring the potential for a recipe sharing initiative to occur in the space, whether that be through a regular cookery group, recipe cards for visitors to take away or a combination of both. We are also working with independent access consultant Ash Cox who will be taking us through what access is and how we can work towards shaping the Dining Room to be an inclusive space. We will also be undertaking oral history training, with community curators recording histories from their respective communities to inform our growing project archive.