Bare Skills: Food

What will we eat at the end of the world?

Join us on Saturday 13 December, 2–5pm for the fifth Bare Skills workshop – Food – where participants will enter an interactive space to think about how they can source, identify and prepare nourishment for themselves, their community and local ecosystems using limited resources.

Bare Skills: Food will begin with a cooking class in the PAS kitchen led by Baramadagal women Kylie and Kursty Colemane, who will share native plant ingredients from the Dharug region. Participants will make breads and other dishes using edible plants found around Parramatta.

Kylie and Kursty will then guide the group through plant identification techniques, showing participants how to recognise native herbs, fruits and common weeds that are safe to forage in local streets and parks. Time will be spent drawing plants, observing their forms and learning how to read the landscape for edible species.

Afterwards, artist Gianna Hayes will guide a session on seeds and the stories they hold about movement, heritage and belonging. Participants will be invited to prepare a personal “seed story” by thinking of a plant that connects them to their family story or culture. Bring a photo of the seed or the physical seed with you so you can contribute to a digital seed archive collated by the artist.  

Bare Skills is a new series of art and survival workshops for young people aged 14 to 25, developed by Parramatta Artists Studios and hosted every second month at PAS Granville.

It is a safe and inclusive space, and people with diverse identities and abilities are welcome. The ground floor of Parramatta Artists Studios in Granville will include a kitchen, communal reflection table, two workshop spaces and a themed quiet area with a resource library.