I had my first meeting with LS6 Cafe Bar today (after a number of email exchanges of our ideas). I met the Manageress at 3.00 pm in the Cafe and discussed further the ideas for the project.
Both the Manageress and the owner of the Cafe requested that I meet with 3 of the Chefs that work there, a Polish, a Greek and an Indian chef, I will watch them work, producing meals and then they will each give me 3 of there "specials recipes" traditional to their culture and completley original and thought up by the individual chef. My first meeting is with Bobby, the Indian chef on Tue 2nd March. We also discussed some of the ideas for how I could present the recipes and made a mutual agreement that the recipes should be printed on napkins and given to the customers when they dine in the Cafe.
We also decided that because Hyde Park has a large amount of Vintage shops and the actual Cafe used to be a Vintage clothes shop and has taken a lot of inspiration for the interior from that style, that the recipes should be designed and illustrated using a Vintage feel. We aslo decided that I should stick to a colour theme when designing the recipe napkins (hot pink, burnt orange and chocolate brown - these are the dominant colours used in LS6 Cafe). Also the Cafe's name and my name should be printed on the napkins.
The recipe napkins will be handed out in the week before my deadline - Mon 15th March - Sun 21st March, I will also have a feedback book/log so customers can write down what they think of the recipies for both mine and the Cafe's benifit. The recipies will then be exhibited on napkins in the artist exhibition space above the Cafe (I am booked in to exhibit on Tues 23rd in the evening) as then I will be taking the recipies and looking at them more of a piece of art.
This meeting has really helped me develop my ideas and have a clearer view of where the project is heading.

I did an elective last week called "Object" which involved using objects and recycling them to reform something of your choice. I decided to link this with my Collaborative Strategies project and used cooking as an original theme and went on to create recycled paper using takeaway menues and recipies handed out in supermarkets, I then added herbs, spices, fruit skins, vegetable skins etc to the paper and eventually created a paper apron with healthy recipies on and a motif of "eat well, recycle well".. This has been a great learning curve and making paper using food products has made me think about creating scented cookbooks, or cookbooks with the ingredients in the paper. Just an idea that i will put forward to LS6 Cafe at our next meeting...

‘One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well’
Virginia Woolf

Cooking IS an art and this is the main aspect behind my ideas for creating new and innovative, artistic based cookbooks.
Cooking is a passion of mine along with art, so why not incorporate two of my main loves in life…
Therefore I have decided to collaborate with the owner and chefs at LS6 Café Bar in Hyde Park (previously known as The Clock Cafe); this is a trendy little café with great artistic interior and a busy student atmosphere.


Up to now I have been collecting research, ideas and inspiration as to how and in what format/style I will present the cook books, with this body of research, I will put forward to the staff at LS6 Café and get feedback in our next meeting. The final outcome will be a complete incorporation of both of our ideas and collection of recipes. I intend on exhibiting the cookbooks in whatever format they end up being inside LS6 Café towards the end of March.
My ideas are extremely open at the moment as input from LS6 Café is very important and could steer my original ideas in a completely different direction, but I am trying to “think outside the box” and reinvent a new, artistic way in which recipes can be put across, for example printing recipes on napkins, aprons, coasters, salt & pepper pots, sandwich bags etc (so not the traditional format of a “book”)
I may even think about printing recipes around the walls in LS6 Café, the ideas are endless.
Although my main source of inspiration recently has been Vintage style cookbooks, menus, recipes and cookery magazines as I really like the quirky style they use and the imagery is mostly in an illustrated format which again is great in respect to my project and linking cookery with art, I see Vintage cookbooks more as a piece of art than anything else because of the illustrations used, also Hyde Park, Leeds where the Café is situated is well known for its large array of Vintage and second hand shops which could link in with my project and steer us towards using it as a theme for the final outcome.
The actual recipes that I use are also an important part of the final outcome, these could be recipes from people that have dined in the Café and have donated there favourite recipes to the project, or they could just be recipes from the Chef’s at LS6 Café as part of what is included in the menu, “ not only will you get a fantastic meal, you will get the recipe for it also “, this is just an original idea but once I have presented my ideas to the Café, I will have a better idea in which way the project is going.
I am going to focus on the idea that cooking is an art and creating something presenting recipes in an artistic format, something that is different and original and could be classed as a piece of art but has other uses also.
I am extremely excited about this project and am looking forward to learning new skills and processes along the way; also I think it will be a fantastic learning opportunity to work along side a group of professional people that have completely different skills to me.

Im am currentley doing a Collaborative project at Leeds College of Art and Design in which i am collaboratinbg with the Chefs/owner of LS6 Cafe Bar (formally known as "The Clock") in Hyde Park, Leeds. My intentions are to recreate cookbooks in an artistic style using the idea that "cooking is an Art", i will get alot of imput and ideas from the cafe and the people working there to create these cookbooks (although they may not actually end up being in the form of a book, the ideas are endless for creating something new and inovative regarding cookery), finally i intend to exhibit my final outcome in LS6 Cafe Bar towards the end of March when i complete this project..