Shaping Caribbean social sustainability through memory: connecting youth, food heritage, and sustainable futures through the recipes for resilience project

Caribbean plantation economies disrupted ancestral foodways based on Indigenous relationships of care among humans, non-humans, and the environment. Introducing African enslaved labour into Caribbean plantations altered relationships between African labourers and their foodways, ways of life, and the environment. Present-day continuities of the ‘Plantationocene’ are evidenced in gendered, classed, and income-based inequalities, as well as in the differentiated experiences of ethnicities, in access to healthy, sustainable food and land resources. These inequalities are compounded through their coupling with unsustainable patterns of food production, trade, and consumption. This paper locates social sustainability in human well-being and the strength of communities, especially those linked to Indigenous and African descendants. This sustainability connects environment, economy, and practices to reduce inequality, promote inclusion, and build resilient societies capable of change and collective action. It outlines the methods and outcomes of the project: ‘Recipes for Resilience: Engaging Caribbean and British Caribbean Youth in Climate Action and Afrodescendant Food Heritage through Storymapping and Song’, implemented in 2021–2022. The project used a range of participatory digital and co-creative methods, including digital games, storytelling, and StoryMaps, sensory oral histories, music, and songwriting prompted by memory to elicit memories of ancestral practices of planting, cooking, and eating food in the Caribbean. The project not only increased participating youth’s awareness of the deep-seated ‘nexus’ between unsustainable and unequal food systems in the Caribbean, but also enabled them to voice their concerns and solutions for climate just food futures in the region. Together, researchers and research participants charted possibilities for endogenous and inclusive pathways for social sustainability in the Caribbean.