What’s more festive than food at Christmas?
This is the story of #foodiewop.
What to do with no idea and an exhibition stand
A few years ago the extraordinary Hela Wozniak-Kay and I were wondering what would be a “good thing” to do just before Christmas. What’s more the ever-talented Erwin de Boer and I had got ourselves a stand at a big business expo thingy in Excel London so we thought, “We’d jolly-well have to come up with a spiffingly creative wheeze or else we’ll end up just hanging about looking a little bit shifty&bored, just like all those other stand-people”.
“I have an idea”, said Hela.
Food glorious food
“Why don’t we do something yummy for those lovely people at Beyond Food?”.
The Beyond Food Foundation is the brainchild of Simon Boyle, chef and serial social entrepreneur. Its aim is to put homeless people back into employment by teaching them how to be chefs. Its base and flagship restaurant is the fabulous Brigade in Tooley Street, London.
Hela knows a lot of people. She happened to know Simon as her tribe of sassy, savvy businesswomen, Sister Snog, lunched at Brigade on a monthly basis.
“Let’s do them a song, Jez!”
“Oh! And a music video!”
“Did I forget the Facebook campaign page?”
Blinkin’ brilliant & syncin’ super
At the business expo, Erwin, Hela and I managed to persuade innocent exhibition bystanders to interrupt their biz-stand browsing and lip-synch the Brigade Christmas menu. They did rather well, as you can see.
Of course, we couldn’t complete the campaign without repeat-and-rinsing, this time with the Brigade chefs and waiting staff as our victims. You can see the finished concoction by clicking at the end of this video.
Jez named the whole shebang, song, music vid, Facebook page and all, #foodiewop. He was of course ably assisted by
- Hela, who coordinated the project and who was responsible for sourcing most of the garlands and Christmas trinkets which adorned the video, not to mention its art direction.
- Erwin, whose camera skills were responsible for the whole gorgeous lustre
- The fabulous no-longer-bystanding expo cast
- Brigade stars
Still foody-ing, still inspiring
This was all in 2013. In 2019, Beyond Food is going stronger than ever, as you can see, with Simon still at the helm.
I do hope you enjoy this Yuletide morsel.
Thanks to The Projects for use of their beautiful sitting room.