Social Oven

Social Oven uses cooking to recreate positive neighbourhood structures and support healthy ageing in Polish housing estates.

Social Oven is an experimental kit seeking to empower elderly women in Polish housing estates to become a part of their community again. Through using their invaluable cooking skills they are encouraged to exchange homemade meals for a neighbourly favour or a monetary incentive and apply their knowledge in cooking workshops, consequently re-establishing social bonds.

This project began as a reaction to research conducted in Poland which emphasized the deterioration of social bonds between neighbours, especially amongst elderly living in housing estates. It also highlighted the fact that cooking is the primary activity of women over 60, used to providing food for their families. This became a stimulus for creating Social Oven kit, which would be distributed amongst the elderly population on a subscription basis.

The kit itself is a tangible way of storing information about allergens, recipes and the service built around cooking, designed by using familiar food motifs and pleasant textures to assist the user in setting up and encourage them to navigate the neighbourhood, one meal at a time.