From Cooking to Commoning: The Making of Intangible Cultural Heritage in OneLoveKitchen, Athens

Solidarity and Care Economy in Times of ‘Crisis’: A View from Greece and Hungary Between 2015 and 2020

“…A constellation of refugee housing squats and other solidarity initiatives-social clinics, collective kitchens, intercultural schools, training workshops, free shops, legal advice, and translation services, etc. (Travlou 2020; Zaman 2020)-was built through the redirection of the energy and infrastructures of the movement that had assembled during the preceding years of austerity crisis. In the following months, foreign volunteers and activists arrived in Athens and became involved in these networks.…”

“…In 2015-2016, one of chapter authors participated in a series of collective kitchen projects in Athens (Senait's Eritrean pop-up kitchen, the African Collective Kitchen: OneLoveKitchen, and Options FoodLab). The aim of these projects, run by refugees, migrants, and local and international activists, was to create safe, shared social spaces where migrants and locals would care for each other, cook together, share food, and organise events that would bring people together (Travlou 2017(Travlou , 2020. Besides facilitating cultural exchange between all those involved in the kitchen projects and across the latter's wider social networks, this interaction challenged hegemonic notions of exchange value and the idea that value is produced only through paid labour (Wilson 2018).…”

“…The budget was decided collectively through participatory decision-making practices inspired by citizen and neighbourhood assemblies in Latin American cities. In Athens, as in Latin America, participatory budgeting was deployed as a tool for economic democracy to involve those often excluded from conventional methods of public engagement (Travlou 2020).…”

Kropotkin-19: A Mutual Aid Response to COVID-19 in Athens

“…In September 2015, the first refugee housing squats emerged in an abandoned hotel in central Athens (City Plaza) and in an abandoned public office building. A constellation of refugee housing squats and other solidarity initiatives social clinics, collective kitchens, intercultural schools, training workshops, free shops, legal advice and translation facilities, to name a few (Travlou 2020)was built though the redirected energy and infrastructures of the social movement that had assembled during the preceding years of the austerity crisis. Since 2015, many foreign volunteers and activists have arrived in Athens and got involved in these networks, especially in and around the neighborhood of Exarcheia, in the very center of Athens, where squats accommodate around 2500 to 3000 people.…”

“…This contribution is part of an ongoing project that over the last decade has looked at collaborative practices within emerging creative networks of artists, activists, and refugees in an Athenian and transglobal context (Travlou 2013(Travlou , 2014(Travlou , 2017(Travlou , 2020. My central question is how communities and groups within these networks form and change through the collaborative practices of their members.…”