FESTA is a biennial Labour Weekend event that consists of a headlining event in the heart of Christchurch and a wider programme of workshops, talks, pop-up projects, family events, tours, live performance, artworks and more across the weekend. This year’s event will be from 19 to 22 October and aims to explore the theme of ‘food and the city’. 

The festival, which drew more than 16,000 visitors to Christchurch in 2016, is currently calling for expressions of interest for their associate programme. This programme build’s on the event’s theme by exploring the interconnections between food and urbanism through a range of events at venues around the city all weekend long.

Event organisers say, “Food connects places, people and ideas and is an integral part of the urban fabric. From the domestic sphere to the workplace, from streetscape to public space, it shapes our urban environment and has the capacity to enrich it. The food system (growth, distribution, consumption, waste) interacts with, and impacts, a range of areas: health, land, water, transport, economy, waste, identity, culture, environment, amenity, employment and equality to a name a few. It presents us many challenges in the twenty-first century, but also many opportunities – it is a great connector.”

FESTA relies on the community as a crowd-created festival and is looking for expressions of interest in their wider programme. These might include investigations or reimaginings of:  

• Food’s role in smart cities
• How food shapes the urban environment (now/historically)
• The way we interact with the built environment through food
• Its influence/reflection on different areas and architectures (from mall and food desert to urban farms, picnic spots and farmers’ markets)
• Food resilience and food ecologies
• Sustainability
• Food insecurity (accessibility of healthy food)
• Proximity to source
• Food’s potential for participatory design
• Food knowledge centres
• Kaitiakitanga, mahinga kai, manaakitanga 
• Food as a catalyst for community development
• Practices and traditions associated with food
• Managing food waste streams
• Collective imaginings of where and how you wish to share food
• Land use etc.
• Celebrating community based-food experiences and knowledge in suburban centres
• Nutrition and public health.

Submit expressions of interest and any questions to Emma at emma@festa.org.nz by 20th May. Submissions will be subject to a selection process.

Read our review of FESTA 2016 here.

Find out more information about the event at festa.org.nz.