"I like making food for other people and I like eating with other people. At the start of a project a often try to have everyone involved come round mine for tea, but that's not always possible, so then we do this instead:

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• Bring a load of sliced bread (white, brown, gluten free) and fillings (to suit all dietary requirement of the group)

• Pair up everyone in the group

• Invite them to discuss their "perfect sandwich in their pairs

• Ask the pair to prepare their partners "perfect" sandwich

• Sit, chat and enjoy the sandwiches together

• If you have the time and resources, repeat with a "pudding" sandwich (encouraging people to really push the boundaries of what a sandwich can be)

• Tidy up

• Get back together as a big group and talk and make collaborative notes on how it felt to make and be made sandwiches, to eat together, chat together and (very importantly) tidy up together

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Things I have found come out of this:

Discussions / understandings about shared, and not shared, culture (around eating and cooking, but also around, creativity, gifts, mess and sharing)

Code of conducts / manifestos about how and why we work together

People giving themselves permission to be creative

Friendships

Some wildly bizarre and extremely beautiful sarnies

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Images: Collaborative sandwich making session at Social Practice Forum, Newcastle. The NewBridge Project, Newcastle // Gateshead, 2019

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