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Skye & Raasay enquiries: shona@climavore.org
General enquiries: season@climavore.org
Becoming CLIMAVORE enquiries: becoming@climavore.org
About
CLIMAVORE is a social enterprise that collaborates with local residents, schools, restaurants, and international researchers and activists, to share new approaches to regenerative sea-farming and food waste.
Our mission is to create ways of living on and with the coast as humans change the climate.
Our vision is to empower coastal communities in Skye and Raasay, who are custodians of their land, culture and futures, to review local food systems through CLIMAVORE and drive a just transition in the wake of the climate and biodiversity crises.
Our work operates around three pillars: Relearning, Regrowing, and Rebuilding.
RELEARNING – Creating skills and education programmes which enable people to redesign their food and food-waste systems. In parallel, assembling memories, recipes, songs, archival photographs and film footage, and capturing coastal experiences through Gaelic place names, folklore and traditions as key knowledge for a shared understanding of what the coast once was and what has the potential to be.
REGROWING – Establishing CLIP (Closed-Loop Intertidal Polyculture) sea orchards, a pilot for a community-owned intertidal farm that uses the coast as a space for sourcing food while cultivating multiple ecologies. Accessible on foot, these are tidal gardens for different species of seaweeds, sea vegetables and bivalves that regenerate ocean water, absorb carbon emissions, contribute to food security, and strengthen local food supply.
REBUILDING – Exploring ways to construct CLIMAVORE by recycling intertidal food waste into a new material that replaces cement and petrochemical resin with fired and crushed seashells collected from CLIMAVORE restaurants.
Our work has been acknowledged by multiple awards, including nominations for the 2021 Turner Prize, Harvard University Wheelwright Prize, the Visible Award, the Special Award at the Future Generation Art Prize. It has featured in dozens of international exhibitions and media.
CLIMAVORE CIC is a registered Community Interest Company – SC640874.
CLIMAVORE Skye & Raasay is one of three CLIMAVORE Stations, which are platforms to expand the long-term development of CLIMAVORE projects initiated by Cooking Sections. To find out more visit climavore.org.
Background
In 2016 ATLAS Arts commissioned artists Cooking Sections to create a new site-specific project in Skye. Using the intertidal zone at Bayfield a new structure was created in September 2017, when each day at high tide, its bivalves and seaweeds filtered and oxygenated seawater, while supporting different ecologies. At low tide the table and its benches emerged above the sea and functioned as a new public forum to discuss alternative aquacultures for the islands.
Over breakfast, lunch or dinner (according to the tides), the structure was activated by conversation, debate, and shared meals with residents, politicians, scientists, fishers, educators, artists and researchers, re-connecting people with the coast while tasting ingredients that filter seawater by breathing.
During performative conversations and workshops, participants enjoyed bloody oyster cocktails, twice hand-dived scallops, tidal crispbread, kelp lasagna, and dulse soup. The multispecies table brought residents to a familiar site often overlooked from the shore. The short window of the tide, two to three hours, created a sense of urgency to build a common ground for conversation and action. At the table, out of their comfort zones, residents shared frustration, desire, and dissent, and, when present, confronted local decision makers for inaction towards salmon farm pollution.
Alongside this, ten restaurants – Michelin-starred eateries, food trucks and cafes – removed farmed salmon from their menus and replaced it with a CLIMAVORE dish, utilising seaweeds and bivalves. This was complemented by film screenings, boat tours and guided walks.
This commission marked the beginning of the long-term work of CLIMAVORE in Skye and Raasay.