Kitchen Stories
After Newham Festival of Stories, Kitchen Stories continues as an evolving facilitation programme across the borough, bringing people together through food, storytelling and shared cultural memory while contributing to a growing community-led archive.
Kitchen Stories uses food as an accessible entry point to explore migration, belonging, care and everyday cultural practices. Hosted in libraries, community spaces and local hubs, each session invites participants to gather around a shared table, engage with archival photographs and prompts, and contribute a recipe and story drawn from their lived experience. Through conversation, writing and image-making, Kitchen Stories creates spaces for listening, exchange and reflection, foregrounding knowledge that is often absent from official heritage records.
The programme is research-led and adaptive, responding to each setting and community. Sessions generate recipes, stories and visual material with consent, forming part of an expanding archive that reflects Newham’s diversity while testing ethical, participatory approaches to community archiving.
National Storytelling Week 2026 (31st January - 7th February 2026)
In partnership with Society for Storytelling UK and Literacy Trust, collaborating with Newham Libraries (Stratford, Canning Town, Custom House, Plaistow, East Ham, and North Woolwich).
International Women's Day (4th March 2026)
In collaboration with Stratford Library.
Renewal Programme (dates to be confirmed)
Charity supporting those in Newham who face a variety of challenges by providing services such as food bank, warm meals, community hub, ESOL & digital skills classes, housing support, youth services and more.
Kitchen Stories is both a facilitation programme and a long-term research project, exploring how food stories can shape more inclusive, community-led approaches to cultural memory.
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