On 9 June, we gathered at BAC ART LAB in Leuven for The Convivial Table: Utopian Foodscapes – a day dedicated to exploring how food can help us imagine and practice different ways of living together.

Inspired by the ideas of utopia, we asked ourselves: what futures can we cultivate through the ways we grow, prepare, share, and experience food? Rather than seeing utopia as a distant dream, we explored it as something that can take shape through everyday practices, relationships, and collective acts of care.

Together with artists, researchers, designers, chefs, activists, cultural practitioners, and curious minds, we moved through conversations, performances, walks, experiments, and a collectively created dinner. We explored crisis foods, multispecies relationships, urban foraging, fermentation, and the many connections – visible and invisible – that sustain our food worlds.

At a time of growing ecological pressures and profound changes in our food systems, we reflected on how inherited knowledge, emerging practices, and more-than-human perspectives can help us nurture more caring, reciprocal, and sustainable futures.
We left the table with new questions, new connections, and a renewed sense that futures are not only imagined but also made together now. Our next steps will include a collaborative art-investigation publication reflecting on the themes of the day.

A heartfelt thank you to all contributors and participants who made this table a living space of exchange, and a special thanks to the BAC ART LAB (@bacartlab) for trusting us with their magnificent space.