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An illustration of four houses linked together with string. The text reads "Connect through Cooking, meet your neighbours in a free online cooking class".

Connect Through Cooking

Some of the world’s most serious health and social issues are ignored or hidden from public view. As a result, many people who need help are afraid to seek it. At Talking Taboos, we use design and behavioural science to understand the beliefs and attitudes that fuel these stigmas, and work with communities to develop design solutions to challenge taboos.

An illustration of four houses linked together with string. The text reads "Connect through Cooking, meet your neighbours in a free online cooking class".

Explorations

Framing Opportunity

Generating Ideas

Build & Test

Timeline

March 2021 – December 2021

Connection in times of COVID

Before COVID disrupted all our lives, the Talking Taboos and Common teams had been exploring the taboo of loneliness and what could help tackle it. In the last year we have experienced increased loneliness and isolation as we stayed home, were physically distanced and lost loved ones, but also enhanced closeness as communities came together and supported each other through acts of kindness, compassion and organised groups like mutual aid.

We believe that we need to tackle loneliness by creating more moments for local connections – spaces where we can meet and connect with people we live near, rebuilding a sense of community and potentially making new friends.

Design Solution: Enter... Connect Through Cooking

We need a solution that will nurture our communities, so we are arranging a cooking class with neighbours that will foster connections with people who live close to each other. We hope that in the summer months (restrictions pending) we can take this class outdoors into a street dinner.

We are designing our first events to include conversation prompts that we hope will help spark connections.

Link to Eventbrite

If you’d like to read more about connecting with strangers here are a couple of the articles and resources we’ve found really helpful:

People

Iria Lopez, Florence Nolan, Katherine Jennings, Kat Marczyk, Amanda Morrison, Michael Bond

Disciplines

Collective action, Public engagement

Excited to work with us?