Dawn Johnston, Lisa Stowe and the Communal Table Project

Nothing connects people like sitting down to share a meal together. For some U of C students, many of whom are away from home for the first time, gathering to cook and eat is a nurturing experience that also helps boost cooking skills.

Dawn Johnston and Lisa Stowe, U of C instructors in the department of communication, media and film (and a couple in real life), launched the Communal Table Project as a way to educate and connect students in an authentic, hands-on way.

"We knew that we wanted that sense of community first.- Dawn Johnston

Born and raised in Newfoundland — Dawn from the east coast, Lisa from the west — the pair came to Calgary, more or less together, in 1997. Dawn was in grad school and Lisa took a job at the Calgary Association of Self Help as a writing instructor.

"We didn't think we were going to stay in Calgary," Dawn said. "Who does? But Calgary has been very good to us."

Teaching at U of C in 2004, they proposed a special topics course on food culture to offer over the spring and summer.

"We were both watching a ton of food TV at the time," Dawn said.

"It was the height of Food Network — back when they actually cooked, not competed," added Lisa. "The idea behind the course was to look at food in media, restaurant culture, and the rhetoric of food. We were focusing on the communications areas of food. We were really avoiding talking about the politics of food. It's such a downer."

Their first course had 30 students registered. They bought piles of cookbooks. They brought their students to Sunterra to discuss the concept of upscale/luxury grocery brands and went to SAIT to eat at the Highwood Dining Room.

"We did all these kooky field trips," Dawn said. "We went to Peter's Drive-In and Gus Peters brought burgers out for everyone and did a guest lecture sitting on the side of the highway."

Dawn and Lisa became known as the food ladies on campus as their annual course grew in popularity and evolved.

"It changed focus," Lisa said. "It started as really pleasure-oriented, but the students really wanted to talk about politics. They wanted to talk about organics, local — everything we were trying to avoid. So we realized we better put a few sessions in about globalization, and address the BSE crisis that was going on at the time. We ended up reshaping the course to have kind of an equal focus on pleasure and the politics of food."

A few years ago, their program became a regular part of the U of C curriculum. Now with 80 students, they divide the group in two for one annual field trip — to River Cafe for lunch, where they talk to executive Chef Andrew Winfield and owner Sal Howell about food issues and their vision for the restaurant.

In 2007, Dawn and Lisa developed a study abroad course, in which every second year 25 students go to Spain for three weeks to study food culture, globalization and culinary tourism. But they still wanted to do more at the university.

"We wanted somehow to develop a food community on campus, and we weren't sure what that looked like. Is it a community kitchen? A community garden? Is it a big potluck we have once a month?" Lisa said. "We had a lot of discussions, and we realized we wanted it to be a communal table. We wanted everyone to be able to sit around the table and eat together. How we got there, we weren't quite sure."

They learned that an old faculty hall was being decommissioned — and it had a kitchen.  They asked to use it, but it was torn out to make space for offices.

The seed had been planted — they started hunting around for kitchen space they could use.

"We knew that we wanted that sense of community first," Dawn said. "That's what drove us to look for the kitchen, to come up with menus, to do what we needed to do to help students cook together."

When space was offered in the Red and White Club, they applied for funding and the Communal Table Project was born. Dawn and Lisa, with the help of a handful of volunteers from other groups within the U of C, launched a three-year pilot project. (They've just come to the end of that three-year term and as of now, the future of the CTP is uncertain.)

Students would sign up to come cook together (at no charge), then sit down to the multi-course meal they prepared.

"The first dinner was hilarious," Dawn said. "We didn't know what we were doing. But all these students showed up! Thirty of them, which was our limit. We made gnocchi, but we couldn't even get the water to boil — we didn't know the pot had to be special to work on an induction burner. We literally couldn't boil water. We were all standing around, watching this pot of water that wouldn't boil. We wound up boiling cups of water in the microwave — everybody got like 4 gnocchi, and then a bunch to take home and cook themselves."

They worked through each obstacle as it presented itself, roasting vegetables when there was no stovetop, and encouraging students to consider their local food communities, to make the connection between grower and consumption. Offers of local products led them to collaborate with urban farmers and small producers, many of whom have come in to cook with and talk to the students — a different group each month.

"We get this mix — students who are living in residence, students who are living at home, students who are out on their own for the first time and are coming because they want to know how to cook stuff," Dawn said. "It's a totally random group. We have grad students in mathematics who would come out, or a pocket of med students or engineers. It's always so diverse. And there are always students who come alone, some  come with friends, others come by themselves looking for that sense of community."

"Watching them teach each other was the coolest. We made sure that they were teaching each other," said Lisa. "We made sure at each station, someone knew how to chop an onion, or peel garlic."

Between the menu planning and shopping, accommodating dietary restrictions and navigating a wide range of cooking skills in a not fully functioning kitchen, running the Communal Table Project is a lot of work, but the benefits are almost incalculable.

"There are so many struggles," Dawn said. "And then there's this euphoria when we all sit down at the table together. It's worth it. And it's always delicious."