What is a Disco Soup?
Disco Soup started in Germany about 8 years ago, known as a “Schnippeldisko”! It was a ‘protest soup’, against the huge amounts of food waste, and huge amounts of edible surplus food were save from being wasted, prepped along to party beets, and then they fed 8000 people! Since then the Disco Soup has spread all over the world!
Abundance Oxford helped organise the very first Disco Soup in the UK, many discoball moons ago, and we’re still organising them today, because sadly, food waste remains a huge issue; and as sadly, so does food poverty. For both these reasons, we always serve up Disco Soups for freeee for alll.
How do we Disco Soup?
At a Disco Soup, we love to Chop, Dance & Eat to the Beet(roots) of music, gorge on gourds and squash food waste into souper food whilst having a good time! It’s great if anyone who passes by and eats wants to, and is able to come help prep some veg, to help the next passersby enjoy the next pot of hot tasty soup or stew for free too!
There’s SO much food that goes to waste in UK, let’s feed hungry bellies not bins, for FREE!
BIG shout out and thanks to the incredible Oxford Food Hub, formerly known as the Oxford Food Bank for all they do in collecting food surplus around the city; we take just a fraction of that on our one-off pop up cook up and feasts and serve hundreds of people free food.
** When is the next Disco Soup? **
Disco Soup is BACK! on Sat Sept 4th, for a free food surplus cook up and community feast lunch (served from 12) on the streets to disco BEETS! Disco Soup! Free Cook up & Lunch – 4th Sept | Facebook
Just outside the Old Fire Station, on Gloucester Green, as part of the celebrating the CAG “From the Ground Up” exhibition. Come by anytime from 11:30am to help out, and we’ll be serving hot food 12noon – 1:30pm (or till whenever it runs out!)
Help prep perfectly edible veg that might otherwise have gone to waste, and let’s feed bellies not bins!
Sign up to get stuck in and volunteer (from 9:45am till 3pm we need volunteers, on two hour shifts involving anything from prep, sign making, cooking, serving, decorating, dancing to the beet and the pack down party!), and find out more here (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cCKteNTl7Psg9yGoYaKSClr-WyWguCaVnLAt9YWY2uU
More info on previous Disco Soups:-
#pumpkinrescue
Don’t be scared of food waste, come to #DISCO SOUP a free community cook-up and feast on the streets to the beets of music… on SATURDAY 3rd November 2018, 12-3 open to the public
(volunteers needed 9:30 am – 5:30pm, all welcome to sign up:- email us on discosoupoxford@gmail.com if you’d like to help and to find out more!)
Facebook event here:-
To be a part of the organising crew for THIS COMING Disco Soup
on Sat 3rd Nov or other surplus food extravaganza, please email DiscoSoupOxford@gmail.com, with your name, phone number and a hello!
The next Disco Soup Oxford will be another free, accessible event; highlighting food waste that we need to SQUASH, celebrating the almighty pumpkin
– foodies remember the 3rd November, to cook up your Halloween pumpkin and squash! Don’t be too spooked to join in, we’d love new volunteers!
If you love to cook, or would like to meet others interested in food and who hate wastage through the medium of cooking, or would love to help decorate and provide music for a fun, interactive event in the city centre; then get in touch! ALL WELCOME to help on Saturday 3rd November 2018!
The last Disco Soup was Disco Soup #5 on Sunday 5th November! More info here:- https://www.facebook.com/events/367203750372983/; and the one before was on SUNDAY 16th October 2016, World Food Day! More info HERE!
To find out more about what Disco Soup is, read on….
Disco is back to squash food waste with a pumpkin theme… SAT 1st NOV, 12-5 at Bonn Square (opposite the Westgate Centre). Free Food for ALL, Live Music, Great atmosphere. Be there or be pear!
#DiscoSoupOxford (Disco Soup #5) took place on 5th November 2017 with a great team of volunteers turning Bonn Square into a dancing, music-filled, chopping-feasting- and chatting-about-food-waste extravaganza.
#DiscoSoupOxford (Disco Soup Oxford #4) took place as part of World Food Day 2016. We had disco tunes, live music, lindy hoppers dancing and cooked up delicious food from surplus that otherwise wouldn’t have been eaten, and fed hundreds of people!
Disco Soup Oxford #3 took place in Bonn Square on Saturday 1st November and was free for all to join in. We fed 800+ people free soup from produce that would otherwise have gone to waste!
Disco Soup is a FREE COOK-UP & FEAST with LIVE MUSIC, feeding on average 700+ people with food that would otherwise have gone uneaten. Find out more about the international Disco Soup phenomenon below…!
Disco Soup #3 was part of the Oxford Pumpkin Festival: a series of engaging & fun events highlighting food waste in Oxford, using the pumpkin as a prime example of food we throw without thinking!
Here’s the blog on DS#3!
If you’d like to volunteer with future Disco Soups:
> email DiscoSoupOxford@gmail.com!
disco soup facebook link here (#3)
pumpkin festival facebook link here (#3)
Get Bready…!
What is Disco Soup?
Disco Soup is a free Cook-up & Feast to live music: part of a grass-roots international movement to raise awareness of food waste! Inspired by the Slow Food Deutschland’s Schnippel Disko– the first of it’s kind, there have since been “Disco Soup” type events from Paris to New York and many places in between.
Here’s a video from Oxford’s Disco Soup event last year..
Where does the produce come from?
The produce comes from wholesalers such as First Direct, bakers including great, local Natural Bread Company and more, and the Oxford Food Bank also donates produce that they cannot redistribute before it goes to waste. Much food goes to waste in Oxford, in catering, in retail and in our homes: and Disco Soup highlights that we can feed many hundreds of people from this produce.
How many people can you feed from “waste” produce?
In 2013, we put on UK’s first Disco Soup style event – named “FOODISCO” because we had Soup + Abundance Apple juice pressing + Pedal-powered smoothies – which served approximately 600 people soup, juice, or smoothie and donated all leftover uncooked produce to passers-by at the end.
When we say ‘waste’ produce, we mean produce that is perfectly edible and fit for human consumption, but which is, for various problems in our current food system (e.g. from aesthetics of ‘ugly veg’ to being surplus to demand) is not getting to hungry people!
At Disco Soup Oxford #2 (May 2014) we fed approximately 750 people tasty hot soup!
Since then there has been Disco Soup Oxford #3 (Nov 2014) and Disco Soup Oxford #4 for World Food Day 2016 [16/10/16] where we have continued to fill hundreds of bellies and to spread the word about the huge amounts of food going to waste, and organisations trying to do something about it!
When & Where?
Thanks to Oxford City Council we’ve got Bonn Square as a venue (opposite Westgate Shopping Centre), and will be open for everyone to join in peeling, dancing & eating: 12 noon – 5pm !
Want to run your own Disco Soup?
If we can help out, we’d love to share tips and advice. We were the first group in the UK to run a Disco Soup style event, back in November 2013, and we had a very small team working non-stop and a lot of great volunteers, with support from CAG – Community Action Groups – Oxford’s amazing ‘Transition Town’ style support network.
In our May 2014 (second) Disco Soup we again had support from our amazing Community Action Groups project, and we got the brilliant Tristram Stuart, founder of Feedback Global [previously Feeding 5000] and author of Waste: Uncovering the global food scandal to come to help launch it.
Disco Soupe – les français – are Disco Soup heros and have made documents (available in English and French) to help you out – so check these out first, and if you still need help (UK H&S regulations are usually a bit stricter (!) ) then get in touch with us: email DiscoSoupOxford@gmail.com and copy in AbundanceHarvestsOxford@gmail.com
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