Critical Pathways Fellow Tonio Flores to visit Utrecht University in April 2024

Picture of Critical Pathways Fellow Tonio Flores

We are delighted to announce the visit of Critical Pathways Fellow Tonio Flores to Utrecht from 3-24 April 2024. During Flores’ visit, Utrecht University teams up with Casco Art Institute to co-host the cultural and academic activities he is organizing.

Tonio Flores is a farmer, educator, and founder of FarmLab Ecopraxis, committed to growing community gardens, natural farms, and food forests across the Philippines. His practice intersects agroecology, placemaking, and regenerative design. The focus of his fellowship encompasses regenerative agriculture models and communities in his home country. Food is the most intimate way we conspire with our ecologies as it encompasses how we form and revise landscapes, territories, bodies, and beliefs.

During his time in Utrecht, Flores will offer a participatory and place-based inquiry on food cultures aiming to engage community perspectives and lived experiences of food, farming, and nourishment. Opening with the question “How do we create pathways for regenerating our relationships with our ecologies while feeding ourselves?”, Flores will organize three activities during his time in Utrecht:

  • A co-creation workshop on writing a Food Justice Manifesto, in which participants, through community dialogue and co-creation, reflect and write a shared manifesto for food justice. The manifesto will be presented at Casco Art Institute together with a sound and image installation. 
    • WHEN: 8 April 2024, 15:00-17:30
    • WHERE: Universiteitsmuseum Utrecht
  • A Walking and Foraging Workshop, during which participants will be taken on a walking tour through Utrecht's city center, guided by an experienced forager. Experience from the workshop will be serve as input for an ongoing revision of the Food Justice Manifesto. 
    • WHEN: 14 April 2024, 10:00-13:00
    • WHERE: Casco Art Institute
  • A community feast. Exploring ingredients offered as anti-commodity, produce from community-led food systems, and gifts from the forest, a simple community feast from the Philippines will be shared by participants. 
    • WHEN: 18 April 2024, 17:00-20:00
    • WHERE: Casco Art Institute

We hope to see many of you at these special events.