Marpole Mutual Aid Network (MMAN) held two neighbourhood pop-up events next to our 24/7 community pantry. The events welcomed everyone, including our unhoused neighbours who are a part of our community. Over the span of both events, we had over a 100+ community members, including children and elders.
At the first pop-up, we served chai and cookies and distributed a couple of hundred pounds of fruit provided by our community partner, the Vancouver Fruit Tree Project. Neighbours across generations gathered, sharing multilingual conversations and laughter while getting to know each other, discussing the issues impacting our lives, and visually harvesting collective dreams for a future Marpole where everyone’s needs are met!
MMAN had held a series of fresh fruit distribution pop-ups before this. An elder Iranian neighbour asked us why neighbours here don’t gather and spend time together as they did back home. She spoke of how important it is for elders and others not to be isolated. This was one of the catalysts for our Pull Up A Chair two-part pop-up series.
At our final event, we came together to celebrate Nowruz, Eid, Spring Equinox, Passover and our connections with each other. We served homemade cornbread and Turkish Bride Soup- Ezogelin Çorbası, a recipe from Iranian Pakistani chef Yasmin Khan’s cookbook Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus. Yasmin travelled to different refugee camps and migrant communities, highlighting stories that are often marginalized. This fits with MMAN’s ethos of mutual aid, collective care and uplifting the beautiful diversity of our South of 70th Marpole neighbourhood. The soup’s story inspired many to share memories of meaningful dishes from their homelands, underscoring the ways in which breaking bread together and centring culturally relevant food are crucial ways of bringing people together.
Community members were able to engage in three different art activities: a collective collage, dreaming up what we needed for an inclusive Marpole, custom button making for children and “Weighing On My Mind,” an all-ages interactive art installation by artist Erv Newcombe (inspired by Fisher Price playsets) which explores how different forms of power play out in the city.
It was a beautiful day. Many mothers participated in the event with their children, along with other neighbours. The collective collage and the installation sparked multigenerational conversations about housing, the need for public infrastructure such as washrooms and playground improvements, what it means to be living on unceded Indigenous land, supporting unhoused neighbours and more. Parents suggested that the interactive installation tour through schools in the city because of the powerful conversations it opened with children about systemic inequity and the power that people have when they collectively work to create change.
