People's Kitchen Collective
Thursday, April 29, 2021
5:30pm PST
PKC Co-Founders Saqib Keval, Jocelyn Jackson, and Sita Bhaumik at the Montalvo Arts
Center's Lucas Artist Residency Program.
Photo: Tina Case Photography
People’s Kitchen Collective Co-Founder Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik.
Photo Credit: Molly DeCoudreaux
Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is an artist, writer, and educator who uses art as a strategy to connect memory and history with the urgent social issues of our time. South Asian and Japanese Latin American, Sita was born and raised in Los Angeles, Tongva Land, and is based in Oakland, Ohlone Land. She holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College, an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary art and an M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts (CCA). Sita has exhibited and collaborated in the US, Holland, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Mexico. She has been the Scholar in Residence at the Center for Art and Public Life at CCA where she teaches a course called “A Taste of Resistance” in Diversity Studies. A recipient of the Art Matters Grant and a Fleishhacker Eureka fellow, her first book about art and creativity is forthcoming from Kaya Press.
People’s Kitchen Collective Co-Founder Jocelyn Jackson
Photo Credit: Molly DeCoudreaux
Jocelyn Jackson’s passion for seasonal food, social justice, creativity, and community is rooted in a childhood spent on the Kansas plains. Her family would sing a song before sharing a soulful meal. Since then, Jocelyn has practiced law, taught environmental science and ethics, become a yoga instructor, and created performance and visual art. Her inspiring international experiences include serving in the Peace Corps in West Africa and teaching in an ecovillage in Southern India. Jocelyn has presented on the principles of community nourishment at Court Bouillon in Southern France and back home in Oakland for the Fusion of Food and Yoga series at Anasa Yoga. She enjoys collaborating with a wide range of wonderful people and organizations including People’s Community Market, BALLE, Bryant Terry, Life is Living, Impact HUB Oakland, MOAD, Kitchen Table Advisors, NUMI Tea, YES!, and Late Nite Art. She is beginning her fourth year of full hearted cooking. Jocelyn founded JUSTUS KITCHEN to continue to create food experiences that inspire people to reconnect with themselves, the earth, and one another. And she still begins every meal with a song.
People’s Kitchen Collective Co-Founder Saqib Keval
Photo credit: Molly DeCoudreaux
Saqib Keval learned the importance of food from his grandmother's hands. Today, he is a chef and community organizer who imagines and supports new food systems. With revolutionary love from the kitchen to the streets, Saqib’s experience is rooted in social justice movement building and political education. Saqib started the People's Kitchen in 2007 as a grassroots organizing project and alternative restaurant model to fine-dining restaurant culture. He trained as a chef in Aix-en-Provence, France and has helped open and manage restaurants throughout California. Saqib is a community organizer with a long history of intersectional grassroots organizing. Working deeply in the food justice field, Saqib spent three years with groundbreaking food justice organization People’s Grocery. He developed and managed the social enterprise incubator program and food justice fellowship. Saqib worked with The Restaurant Opportunities Center as the national manager of the COLORS restaurants located in Detroit and NYC. Focused on decolonization through food, he has presented his work at Stanford University, The University of Oregon, UC Davis and UC Berkeley, and York University in Toronto. Most recently, he and his partner Norma Listman opened Masala y Maiz in Mexico City.
Sarai Bordeaux holds a Masters Degree from San Francisco State University in Education
with an emphasis in Equity and Social Justice. Through TK-5 curriculum development
and her own personal poetry, Sarai is now working on strengthening the ways that parents
and children build their capacities and identities as life long learners together
through the development of relationships with self and others. For more than ten years
she has been connected in many ways with Peoples Kitchen Collective. She has served
as a conceptual partner for events, as well as front of house and logistics capacities
during Life is Living, the STREETS! meal, and other gatherings. She is presently facilitating
groups with PKC around Octavia Butler source material for their upcoming project.
Sarai is honored to contribute to the conversation around food justice with PKC through
intentional focus on personal growth and community building. Sarai’s poetry was recently
published in the book, “Patrice Lumumba: An Anthology of Writers on Black Liberation.”
Longtime PKC collaborator Saraí Bordeaux will stand in for co-founder Sita who is
on parental leave.
This event is open to the public free of charge.
PLATFORM is presented by ConSortiUm, a collaborative project by the California State University Art Galleries and Museums.
