act14

“You’re born, you go to school, then off to College. You start working or you go to University. You spend a heck of a lot of hours a day dedicated to a job that barely pays for your needs. You work to have a car. You work to have a house, to pay the mortgage, or you think you need a bunch of material goods. You work more, more expenses. You need to work some more. This anxiety for more, more, more, more, more spending of resources, faster, faster, faster. It’s an endless spinning wheel. You can say, “Wait a minute, stop it! Is there another way?”

“We can define Xicoria as a collective aimed at social transformation. Creating a collective outside the city, that was my priority. I was fed up with certain urban dynamics. Right off the bat the idea was to create a self-management of our day by day, living coherently with our ideas because in the end that is what makes us feel good.

Gardening, education and cooking are three paths, the guidelines we’ve picked out of our human resources available, that is, what we already knew how to do, and the resources of the farm, the garden.”

”The kitchen is important because it is a space for relationships, right? A meeting space. When you’re eating and sharing food it is clearly a way of socializing and I loved it. And as a group we’ve got that. At home so often we spend a lot of time talking about food, about what we’re going to cook or not.
So the itinerant kitchen is very much about this. We’re moving offering delicious cooking to gatherings and workshops. So you’re there offering a time of pleasure with good food. Then you’re also meeting people. It’s an open space, and it’s super cool!”

“The market fair is an example of this transformation, right? It’s a way of not staying in your little bubble of the collective project, and do something for the people in town. In the end one has to fill the streets, energize and spend a good time with people. Occupying public space is super important, whether you go to talk about organic agriculture, or present a theatre show; it’s the same.

We wanted to do something in the streets, so we organized the market fair. People strolled along the market all morning. This is also an opportunity for other people cultivating organic to meet, to offer their products, and so people can taste bread, honey, and wine while they get their veggies.
But the purpose goes beyond this; it is to create a meeting space, and occupy the streets, which is our discourse. We wanted the people to meet “Xicoria”, our project, as well as the other organic producers, collectives and consumer cooperatives that also participated. We had a public dinner, and people were flipping: ‘How are you going to make a meal for only five euros?, well ma’am, that’s what it costs and even less’.”