This year’s Terra Madre Salone del Gusto has been given a complete overhaul: for the first time, the event will spread out into Turin, with an extraordinary collaboration that will see it taking over sites that are key to the city’s identity. The University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo will be participating in this innovative new experiment in a creative and multifaceted way.
Our activities will pivot around the UNISG exhibition space, at the heart of the Market within the Valentino Park. Various initiatives will be held here every day. During the morning, students from the Slow Food UNISG Convivium, in collaboration with Slow Food Education, will be organizing workshops and educational activities for children. During the rest of the day, our lecturers will be holding conferences on food in conjunction with various topics (food and film, food and business, food and agriculture, food and research, to name just a few). There will be space for our alumni, who will be sharing their diverse experiences as gastronomists, whether working in Japanese saké or starting up a food business. There will also be a series of events with the international representatives of the Youth Food Movement, who will be in conversation with our lecturers and students.
The UNISG stand will also be a meeting point and starting place for activities run by our students, like the tried-and-tested Personal Shopper themed tours (examples this year include novel foods, Italian food production classics and addictive foods like coffee and chocolate), with young food experts guiding visitors around the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto Market. Bike N’ Eat and Walk N’ Eat, cycling and walking tours of the city, will be following itineraries with a theme like food and religion, urban food growing, food artisans, etc., while at the Eat-Ins, participants are asked to bring food and drinks to share with the other diners. Students will also be running guided tastings at the Terra Madre Enoteca.
UNISG will also be participating in many events outside its exhibition space. Within the Terra Madre Forums, our lecturers will be speaking about topical subjects relating to food like migration, grains, the tangible and intangible heritage protected by the Ark of Taste and Granaries of Memory projects, sustainable tourism, food waste and the role of the gastronome. At the same time, the Dean and other members of the faculty will be taking part in seminars, conferences and debates exploring the event’s major themes held in various venues around Turin.
As usual, our students and lecturers will also be involved in some of the Taste Workshops, while the Pollenzo Cookery School has organized a series of dinners prepared by Michelin-starred chefs with the help of their stagiaires, our Master students.
Once again, UNISG has confirmed its role as scientific coordinator of the Systemic Events Design (SEeD) project, which oversees the systemic design of the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto event within a framework of environmental sustainability, social innovation, accessibility of the cultural experience and local economic impact.
An innovation this year is Food Mood, an activity designed specifically for businesses and professionals in the food sector, organized in collaboration with Turin’s Chamber of Commerce. This commercial B2B meeting brings together event exhibitors, companies, large-scale retail buyers, e-commerce, supermarkets and HORECA, with a space for the presentation of UNISG alumni’s projects and experiences, as well as conferences in collaboration with the University of Turin and the Turin Polytechnic and meetings between our students and alumni and businesses.
As we hope is clear from this brief summary, UNISG’s substantial and diverse program at Terra Madre Salone del Gusto 2016 reflects the university’s dynamic nature, its research areas and the creativity of our students and alumni.