Inheritance Stories: Oral Histories of Food Culture with Lola Milholland

Lola Milholland produces food-related art installations and events, bringing together interactive public engagement with art making and food activism.

Her favorite projects involve collaborating with artists and community members to take an idea from seed to full-blown project. These include a multi-day festival focused on mushrooms, with food, videos, and a zoetrope sculpture; a CSA Share Fair to introduce local eaters to CSA farmers in the Portland area with matchmaking booths and a cookbook swap meet; and a convening of community members to make miso from scratch together and investigate what it means to share cultures, bacterial and otherwise. You can read more about these projects on her website.

Lola also runs a noodle business in Portland called Umi Organic. Their ramen was a recent Good Food Award winner, and their yakisoba was named one of the best school lunches in the country.

Lola is currently working with the Japanese American Museum of Oregon to support the creation of a community cookbook. Her practice always includes interviews, oral histories, and writing.

Her writing has appeared in Gastronomica, Lucky Peach, Meatpaper, Communal Table, Compound Butter, Edible Portland, Oregon Humanities (read her essay “Kitchen Ghost” in our 2021 Fall/Winter issue, Feed), and through her newsletter, Group Living.

About This Workshop

In this So Much Together workshop, Lola will share her work and ideas through dialogue and various media. Then, she will guide participants in creating a cookbook together by interviewing and listening to each other and exploring (as Lola puts it) “how we each hold and maintain cultural traditions even as we evolve them—and why it’s important to put the spotlight on people who may not seek it, or who are sometimes made invisible, but whose lives and stories are entangled in our own.”

Participants will practice the varied skills of oral history, including storytelling, deep listening, and recording. They will learn about each other’s food memories and experience the responsibility of holding another person’s story. They’ll leave with a framework for engaging other people in the practice of collecting and sharing food oral histories.

This free online workshop includes a presentation, conversation, activities, and breaks.

Register for this So Much Together workshop.