David Barrie

The People's Supermarket

This is English chef Arthur Potts-Dawson. He's on a mission to create The People's Supermarket: a not for profit, co-operative grocery store that will feature in a series of TV shows on Channel 4 in the U.K. in 2010.

The People's Supermarket is designed to offer an alternative use for the thousands of empty retail units on our high streets and counter the belief that you can only have either cheap or good food - and never both. 

Over the last few months, Arthur, me and a Panzer division of people working in design, retailing, property and project management in the U.K. have been working up plans for the new social enterprise. 

The supermarket is inspired by the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn that was started in 1973 and now has 17,000 members, offers them a saving of 20%-40% off their weekly grocery bill and enjoys a turnover of $32m. 

Anyone will be able to shop at The People's Supermarket. You'll find our shelves stacked with a wide range of product, from conventional breakfast cereal to locally sourced produce, seven days a week.  

For an annual fee of UK£25.00 ($41.00) - reduced for older citizens, the unemployed and students - and a commitment to volunteer four hours time per month, members will earn a discount on their shopping and a share and role in the management of the enterprise. 

The People's Supermarket is about a great shopping experience, collectivizing the enthusiasm and skill of its members, direct democracy and affordability through participation. 

Just take a look at the message board at Park Slope to see the value of "a shop that you can call your own": 

 

We're hoping to raise thousands of members. 

We're creating a simple product that we hope other entrepreneurs, communities and people across the U.K. will copy.

And we are looking right now at several different empty retail units in the U.K. - here's an image of one, but I can't reveal the location, since it will simply inflate its price.  

The People's Supermarket connects with the growing band of people interested in supporting innovation in recession.

And it expresses utopia, resilience and the power of mutuality.  

 

Do you?

If the answer's "yes", become a member of The People's Supermarket or lend us your support and register at our new website. 

Please show link love and pass this post on. 

If you want to get involved, just drop me a comment here. 

And if you know a philanthropist or investor who wants to support innovative, collective and profitable social enterprise, send them my way. 

The blood, sweat and (let's say) joy of securing the premises, forming the co-op and members' first experiences of running the enterprise will be the subject of a series of prime-time shows on Channel 4 Television in 2010. 

And The People's Supermarket will be published in a book, available in all good stores, featuring recipes created by Arthur from ingredients for sale. 

Images courtesy of Elizabeth Pascoe, Park Slope Coop, Heather Ring, APD and Marcus Foley.  

Supermarkets as rusting hulks

What kind of shopping experience do you prefer?

This:

Or this?

The first is a newly renovated Wal-Mart SuperCenter in Tabb, VA. The second is the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, New York.

Big Box Reuse is a book by artist Julia Christensen that charts the adaptation of big box retail units vacated by Wal-Marts and Kmarts for an even bigger box "supercenter" down the road.

In different parts of the United States, empty units have been turned in to things like a courthouse, a library, a school, even a church.

In the book, Christensen quotes a mayor of Bardstown, Kentucky with a good summary of what's been called the industrialisation of shopping:

The new supercenter in town is geared for tunnel vision, tunnel shopping. You go in, get what you need. You are only distracted by the other hundred things in your line of site that you feel like you need to buy.

When are these supertankers going to be turned in to spaces and places appropriate to an age of personalised entertainment or what Richard Layard has called "a time for less selfish capitalism"?

When might superstores take on some of the personality of the awkward, bumpy humanity that is the interior of Park Slope? 

Do we need to wait until a knobbly, dirty carrot becomes acceptable to buy?

Or with the rise of internet shopping, are these SuperCenters just spruced-up hulks - soon-to-rust relics of another age?

Images courtesy of Ryanrules and Heather Ring.

Could you eat an elephant?

In a recent article in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik remembered the trauma of Barbar the Elephant's loss of his parents and the need to up sticks from the wild and make his fortune in the big city. :(

Barbar was a key moment in us granting the elephant human qualities, sentimentalizing the wild and providing zoos and fun parks dramatic license to present staged realities of the wild.

And the entertainment that surrounds the elephant is unforgettable: Colonel Hathi in the film of The Jungle Book. Dumbo. And the fantasy of elephant tea parties.

The stock of elephants may be falling in West, Central and East Africa and the conservation movement working hard to save them but now in some parts of Southern Africa, there is a problem of too many animals and in some places elephant culling and the animal's meat is back on the menu. 

In a programme that will be shown on Channel 4 Television in the U.K. next week, two of England's most original, environmentally-conscious chefs - Fergus Henderson and Jeremy Lee - challenge their and our food taboos.

Fergus and Jeremy attempt to eat their way up the ladder of animals considered taboo for consumption in the U.K. but part of the diet of other cultures. They travel the world. One place they visit is the Kalahari Desert in Namibia at the time of an elephant hunt. I directed the documentary. 

The population of elephants in Southern Africa is now increasing due to conservation and the changing course of water supply across the continent.

In countries like Namibia, villagers and elephants compete for water and vegetation and stories are legion of attacks and killings of humans by the animal. 

Because of conservation, regulation of hunting and food price inflation, there are often shortages of meat to eat in the country.

And in need of investment, Namibia makes a market in the professional licensed hunting of elephants.

At $30,000 upwards a pop, wealthy Europeans and Americans visit the country in the summer to hunt for 'trophy' meat. Once the animal is killed and the hunters taken their 'prize' - be it the animal's feet or head - villagers are invited to cut up the carcass and share the meat.

All of this is done in the name of ecotourism, "sustainable population management" and villagers love the taste of elephant meat. 

In a landmark decision last year, the South African government lifted the moratorium on elephant culling in the Kruger National Park.

I couldn't eat an elephant. But plenty do.

What interests me more is that while in one culture, an animal is mythologized; in another, people happily kill and eat the thing.

Now there's nothing either shocking or surprising about that - except that liberal right-on-ness says that today we should eat real food and celebrate authentic, local and seasonal food culture. And eating elephant in Namibia appears to be all of these values writ large. 

Authenticity is a huge currency of popular modern culture. 

There's the honesty and integrity of Obama.

A limitless diet of TV shows on extreme eating, tribal living and meddling with lost tribes - i.e. Discovery Channel +1, 2 and +36.

And in an age of frugality, supermarket shelves are filling with offal and foodie culture is going gooey at the thought of eating food down on the farm.

To almost all of us, eating elephant is an authentic step too far. (as is dog - see my earlier post)

It transgresses taste, cultural preferences and personal style.

But doesn't Namibian relish for elephant start to make our commitment to 'real', 'local' and 'authentic' food look like a load of old parochial chic?

Image of dead elephant courtesy of Abby's Mom.