The People’s Cook Project


Robert Farid Karimi

Robert Karimi works with everyday people in cities, companies, and health centers worldwide on making healthy messaging delicious using comedy, culture, and food with his culinary cultural engagement project.

Artist Bio

The People’s Cook Project uses the framework of a live cooking show to engage audiences on the subject of diabetes in communities of color. Incorporating research by health and culinary professionals as well as Robert Karimi’s own family history, the project consists of residencies in immigrant communities in six U.S. cities. Each of these two- to four-week residencies includes a live performance as well as cooking and storytelling workshops. The Peoples Cook Project will result in a cookbook derived from the performances and workshops.


Discipline
Social Practice
Award Year
2009
Status

Completed


Themes
Karimi-Robert

Robert Farid Karimi

Culver City, CA

With 25 years of experience as a community engagement specialist and comedic storyteller, Robert Farid Karimi entertains and educates. A Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, his work has appeared in newspapers, NPR, literary journals, and anthologies. A national poetry slam champion, he has featured throughout the country at venues such as the Nuyorican Poets Café, Def Poetry Jam, The Smithsonian, and SXSW. Creative Capital, the NEA, the MAP Fund, Mosaic Company Foundation, Warhol Foundation, and SuperValu Foundation have invested in his recent projects.

He currently works with everyday people in cities, companies, and health centers worldwide on making healthy messaging delicious using comedy, culture, and food with his culinary cultural engagement project: The Peoples Cook Project. And, he speaks on issues as mixed race/consciousness, food politics, community deliciousness and the power of the Fool/Trickster to change the world. His next project, Champion Swimmer, a Knight Cities Challenge Winner, focuses on how culture shapes our fear of water with a pool-based performance piece to bring cultural history and humor back to the conversation about why communities of color don’t swim and create a world where those that fear the pool can find joy and transcend their fear/trauma.