Allied Media Conference explores 'radical hospitality' with 3 Detroit-area culinarians

People from across the globe gathered — both virtually and in person at Detroit’s Marygrove College — for the Allied Media Conference from June 30 to July 3. For more than 20 years, the now biennial conference has garnered thousands of attendees from New York and California to France and Canada to engage in conversations and interactive exercises centered on social justice matters. After hours, participants kept the conversations going against the backdrop of music by local performers and over drinks and savory bites at places like Detroit City Distillery, reinforcing the event’s mission to explore the intersections of art and activism.

Related: Weekend media event in Midtown is all about community, social justice

As it had in the decades prior, AMC 2022 carved a prominent space for culinary arts. Virtual presentations provided opportunities for participants to learn from specialists in farming and food access in urban environments like Detroit; while film screenings on food sovereignty and a guided herb identification stroll through the paths of Belle Isle offered the chance to engage with local farmers, foragers and food activists.

With health, safety and accessibility in mind, AMC 2022 organizers reimagined ways to contextualize the role food plays in social justice work. In previous years, in-person dinners seating 150-200 attendees provided a space for what AMC Culinary Producer Ora Wise calls “radical hospitality,” which she defines as a practice of caring for a diner’s needs, desires and pleasures outside of a transactional context.

“When I talk about radical hospitality,” Wise said, “it's a focus on accessibility, generosity, sensuality and beauty, grounded in the belief that these experiences and elements of life should not be exclusionary or considered superfluous.”

In 2018, Wise and conference organizers innovated Dream Café, a temporary restaurant that transformed Midtown landmark Cass Café into an eatery featuring Black-owned, Detroit-based food businesses, meals by a diverse group of chefs and ingredients sourced from farms helmed by people of color. The activation presented diners a living, breathing model of an eatery as a locale for social change.

Related: Temporary Dream Cafe in Detroit brings social justice to the table

Related: Cass Cafe, a Midtown hot spot restaurant for Detroit artists, to close for good

This year, in place of in-person, food-centered gatherings, Wise and the AMC introduced a digital zine as an extension of the culinary conversations being facilitated at the conference. Recipes for Radical Hospitality — a collaboration between AMC and Whetstone Magazine, an indie publication covering global foodways, culture and culinary anthropology — features an anthology of recipes and personal stories from 15 culinarians. Among food industry notables from across the country like Puerto Rico-based food writer and forthcoming author Alicia Kennedy and artist and cultural preservationist Gabrielle E. W. Carter, are three Southeast Michiganders at the forefront of food, farming and food sovereignty in the Detroit area.

“Radical hospitality feels like a more comprehensive framework because it acknowledges that hospitality is about behaviors and practices and ways of relating to food and to each other through and around food,” Wise said.

James Beard Award semifinalist and owner of Ann Arbor’s Miss Kim, Ji Hye Kim shares the recipe for the briny Kimjang kimchi she grew up on and the joyous memory of the women who made it. Malik Kenyatta Yakini, co-founder and executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and D-Town Farm on Detroit’s west side, ruminates on the ways global capitalism shows up in a seemingly simple pleasure like a cup of hot cocoa. Tlingit food activist, chef and urban farmer Kirsten Kirby-Shoote offers a thought-provoking interpretation of the impact of the Indian Removal Act and the importance of Indigenous food sovereignty.

More: Here are the metro Detroit restaurants and chefs semifinalists for James Beard Awards

“Choosing the Detroit voices was a very organic process,” said Wise, who curated the contributors for the Recipes for Radical Hospitality zine. “It's the same way I chose everyone, which was: Who do I feel has an approach to working with food that is contributing to culture and power-shifting and taking care of their communities in inspiring ways? Ji Hye, Malik and Kirsten are coming from three really important communities and cultural backgrounds and organizing legacies within the Detroit area.”

Wise said she deferred to the expertise of Whetstone Magazine founder and host of the Netflix hit food series “High on the Hog” Stephen Satterfield and his team for the production of Recipes for Radical Hospitality. She also sees the partnership as yet another model for supporting a multiracial perspective.

“Stephen and I share a commitment to the collective come-up,” she said, “so that’s what this was about. He trusted who I would curate from a content point of view and I trusted the quality of work that his team would do. It was an act of solidarity and friendship and a kind of horizontal mentorship, which I really appreciated.”

In a moment of social and political unrest, Wise asserts the importance of food as a form of activism. “Sometimes, it can feel like it’s not enough to be creating these nourishing and lovely experiences for people around food while we are literally being stripped of our rights,” she said. “But the more I think about it, the more I feel really resolute. Yes, I am working in food because I believe that we need this embodiment and care and love and beauty, but I am also working in food because it is strategic. Food is at the intersection of all the most destructive and exploitative systems governing our lives and it is also such a powerful and central tool for resistance and building sovereignty.”

Though the intention is to return to in-person gatherings centered on meals prepared by local chefs and growers, Wise said Recipes for Radical Hospitality may remain a part of the culinary framework for the next AMC and beyond as a resource for both contributors and participants alike. The team is also in talks about developing a print version of the publication over the next few months. In the meantime, digital downloads are now available to all interested in cooking — and eating — radically.

Recipes for Radical Hospitality, sliding scale $5-$15. store.alliedmedia.org

Contact Lyndsay C. Green at LCGreen@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Allied Media Conference taps Detroit food industry insiders for zine