ABOUT US
We are a kitchen infrastructure collective supporting activists to feed each other, founded on mutual aid principles and values. As a large network of activists spanning a range of groups across Scotland, we aim to support volunteers with the kit, skills, and confidence to feed the social and environmental justice movements we came from.
We believe that food sustains our movements, provides moments of gathering and connection, and strengthens our work for liberation. Whether a weekday protest, a weekend training, or a week-long action camp, our aim is to enable our fellow activists to bring tasty vegan food into their work.
If you'd like to get involved, sign up here!
SKIFA was formed in 2023 by the Climate Camp Scotland kitchen crew, alongside resources from Trident Ploughshares, to establish and grow a large-scale kit library and autonomous network of volunteer cooks. Our collective wouldn't exist without our many amazing volunteers, donations from people we have fed, or help and wisdom from the kitchen collectives who have come before us. We're so grateful to everyone who's played a role in supporting us over the years.
THE ROLE WE PLAY
We see ourselves sitting within a complex web of interconnected groups and movements. We exist across many different social movements. Rather than focusing on a specific issue, we set ourselves against capitalism and the state that created it.
We identified across social movements in Scotland a capacity gap in the logistics needed to cook at scale. We know that many people have the skills and enjoy feeding many people, we found that what prevents people from doing this is the logistics, equipment and funding needed.
By focusing on filling this specific gap in movement capacity, we believe that we can support groups to be more effective in their work without duplicating, replacing or professionalising a role that should be filled by all.
Care work is a radical act - caring for one another without being paid is the simplest act to say fuck you to capitalism that we all participate in every single day!
MUTUAL AID
SKIFA is an projected founded on the belief that mutual aid not competition is the pre-dominant norm of social cooperation and economic activity. We have been robbed of the knowledge that we can collaborate without financial motive and the inherent threat of starvation. Mutual aid has been practiced for millennia, it is practiced today, all over the world in the most dire circumstances and the most abundant.
Mutual aid is an observable instinct within nature, a reason for cooperative economic & social activity. SKIFA has built an series of structures and practices that enable the individuals to organise effectively to complete complex tasks. This is because the concept of mutual aid is not a system, it is a reason and an orientation for the activity being organised.
Mutual aid critically is not charity, it is a mutual act, one where those doing the work to provide the aid are also those benefiting from the aid. Consider you helping your neighbours to fill sandbags to protect the community from flooding. You are affected by this issue you have come together to solve, you are not being paid by anyone and no one is in exerting control over you to do this.
SKIFA does not practice mutual aid, rather it is another project of many that demonstrates it is a driving principle of our society, that it can enable complex organisation to solve complex problems. SKIFA is made up of activists and organised members of communities, we seek to solve the problem that we face, the lack of infrastructure for food within social movements. We are not paid, we are not coerced, we do this so that others will do it for us. This is not a charity, we have our own shit going on, our own campaigns, communities and issues to organise and fight for. We set this up trusting that mutual aid is a fundamental principle of social organisation and that others will mutually return our aid.
SOCIAL MOVEMENT KITCHENS
Write your text here...
