Yemek Pour Tous (Food for All) is a participatory research project exploring the food cultures of people with migration and refugee backgrounds. It is initiated and facilitated by artist and social designer IPek. Yemek Pour Tous builds on IPek’s decade-long experience in diverse official cooking charity projects and self-organised cooking collectives. Since its creation in 2022, it has evolved from one-to-one research on the easiest-to-make recipes into a free-form sharing of participants’ food cultures. The main idea remains the same: to create a bridge through food and art between those with less space for their voice and those with fewer skills to communicate without words.

Yemek Pour Tous focuses on three key topics: food, migration, and gender in private settings. Participants cook—mostly in their own kitchens—share their favourite recipes, and tell their stories. The process is documented, and the recorded material is later remixed and presented by IPek. With the creative participation of other people with migration and refugee backgrounds, she transforms the results into an artistic mixture of food and art.

Yemek Pour Tous appears in many forms and across diverse spaces. Sometimes it is part of an exhibition, where a story and recipe can be taken home as a souvenir. Other times it is a cooking video on social media. Some cookings result in recipe cards, while others spark conversations about community and childhood memories. Whatever form it takes, one thing remains central: Yemek Pour Tous always explores broader social themes, such as changing traditions and the coexistence of different cultures.

While developing communities through knowledge-sharing, Yemek Pour Tous aims to challenge common roles in western society by:

• valuing the knowledge of newcomers (instead of teaching them something new)
• cooking the food of those who are not formally trained to share their knowledge in public spaces (the unofficial cooking masters of private kitchens)
• bringing the stories of people with migration and refugee experiences into the most intimate part of western households (the kitchen)
• learning from other cultures how absurd it is that we rely on recipes instead of teaching each other by cooking together

Are you a person with a refugee background and would like to participate?
Would you like to invite IPek to give a lecture on Yemek Pour Tous, or do you have a food- and migration-based project to collaborate on?
Contact IPek here
This section is under construction. More information about the activities of Yemek Pour Tous (Research, Recipes, Catering) will follow shortly.

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