Eat Club at London Transport Museum: Food is a Vehicle
On 12 October 2022, Eat Club hosted a special meal for a group of 10–12-year-olds dedicated to the buses, trains, tubes, trams, bikes, cable cars and all the ways we get around London.
We used this to give the young people privileged access to an inspiring cultural setting and get them thinking about the importance of travel in their lifestyles. Food was our bridge for doing this.
The connections between food and travel are many, meaning that making a group meal exploring the theme of travel through the LTM collection had tonnes of possibilities.
Food is, of course, vital to travel in a biological sense - as without food, we wouldn’t have the energy to move around and get places. But the presence of food can also be seen across London’s transport network - whether it’s the vehicles used to deliver ingredients, the food adverts on our buses, the tubes we take to shops and restaurants or the graphic posters from London Transport’s history depicting London’s vibrant dining scene. We wanted to explore all these levels in our activity.
To start our session, we had a bespoke tour of the Museum to get the young people thinking about travel, during which we pointed out food links in the display rooms that would prompt our discussion later on. The tour highlighted links like feeding the horses who pulled 19th century buses, London Transport’s Canteens and the Legacies exhibition, exploring Caribbean recruitment into foodservice.
In our workshop space, we then explored other examples in the archive that illustrated the story - including a rather dated film about the 1940’s Canteen Training Centre and a selection of food related objects from the handling collection.
See more about this film on our Collection record online.
Using food as a lens to interpret travel and the collection made the topic really relatable and ordinary while highlighting that different perspectives and experiences of the relationship of food and travel differ in significant ways. Personal and cultural tastes vary and people have varying degrees of access to foods and food experiences.
But as well as using food as a way of analysing our theme, we also wanted to show how food can be a way of expressing it too. Or indeed - how the whole meal experience can be used to creatively share an interpretation of a theme with others. Essentially, co-creating a themed meal.
To do this, the group experimented with designing the table setting with LTM stamps for place cards and napkins, and passed around bus conductor hats for costume.
The dishes we ate were selected from a 1940’s canteen tariff with links to the handling collection and included leek and cheddar tart with pickles, boiled potatoes with tomatoes, rolls with margarine, lime cordial to drink and strawberry jam roly-poly with custard for pudding.
The dining was an opportunity to play transport themed games and hold a facilitated discussion about young people experiences of food and travel.
We wanted to engage the young people in the whole spectrum of ways a meal can be used to engage in a theme, and introduce them to how food can be a route or vehicle for learning about and also creatively expressing ideas.
Conversation flowed about how food travels between places, how the food we eat arrives to the supermarket via truck, train, airplane, and the different foods we eat when traveling abroad.
We also reflected on the film we’d watched and discussed how the food in the TfL canteens had changed over time as London became more multicultural and how attitudes over who does the kitchen work have changed.
The event was a really enjoyable experience that gave the young people access to an inspiring institution and a new perspective on a familiar topic through the informal setting of a group meal.
The tour used links to food as catchy tidbits to explore the collection, participating in making the meal gave the young people an opportunity to be actively involved, and handling objects and eating the food gave them the chance to be physically part of things.
For Eat Club, exploring travel through the lens of food showed that as well as fuelling us to get around, food connects us to the wider world, giving us a chance to learn about subjects in new ways and gain deeper insight into other people’s lives.
We showed how food takes us on a journey of learning as a passenger but also how by being involved in crafting a group meal food we craft communications with others, enabling us to become the driver of stories – indeed a chef of stories.
Because food touches every individual, society and culture, curating learning about food connects young people to an infinite array of topics and themes .Because of this universality, making meals with other people is a fantastic way of sharing stories and news.
If we can help young people see food as a way to share meanings and stories about the subjects they choose, we can empower them to place a healthy diet at the centre of their ability to get out in the world.
Discover more food-related resources from London Transport Museum
For much of the twentieth century, London’s transport companies provided canteens for staff to take a break, eat and relax. Discover what was required to keep the workforce well fed and fit for keeping the Capital moving.
By the early 1950s LT's catering department operated 165 canteens across Greater London. Discover how Croydon Food Production Centre was at the heart of improvements introduced to help canteens struggling to meet demand.
Both men and women were recruited through London Transport's direct recruitment campaign from the Caribbean. Read about how Black women have contributed to London Transport over the years, from canteen staff to bus drivers and beyond.
