Tucson City of Gastronomy
Tucson City of Gastronomy Receives Major Grant to Launch Resilience Kitchen and Expand Initiatives
Tucson City of Gastronomy (TCOG) is thrilled to announce it has been awarded a $750,000 grant from the Humanities in Place Program at the Mellon Foundation, marking a transformational milestone for our organization and the communities we serve. Over the next three years, this funding will empower TCOG to enhance existing programs and launch the Resilience Kitchen program, an innovative initiative that combines heritage preservation, climate resilience-building, and community placemaking through the celebration and stewardship of our borderlands heritage foods.
The Resilience Kitchen will be a community-engagement platform for exploring and sharing the diverse food traditions that help define Tucson’s multicultural identity and sense of place, while equipping our community with tools to build a more sustainable and climate-adaptive food future. By centering Indigenous and immigrant foodways and their resilience and influences on each other, the program will foster deeper connections to place, elevate underrepresented voices, and create new opportunities for community engagement, education, and economic development through food.
Jonathan Mabry, TCOG Executive Director, said, “This grant arrives at a critical time for arts, culture, and heritage nonprofits nationwide. Rather than merely surviving in these challenging times, TCOG will now be able to expand our reach, strengthen our impact, and ensure that Tucson’s rich food heritage remains a source of resilience, pride, and inspiration for generations to come.” He added that the grant funding will also enable TCOG to strengthen existing partnerships and forge new collaborations with southern Arizona nonprofits, ensuring continued progress toward goals shared with organizations impacted by recent funding cuts.
TCOG Board President, Janos Wilder, summarized the funding’s impact on Tucson’s food future: “This grant lets us look forward with optimism as we work to connect more than five thousand years of Sonoran Desert farmers growing and gathering heat- tolerant, low-water crops and wild foods with a new generation of farmers, chefs, and scientists learning from the traditional knowledge keepers and working together to promote these heritage foods as promising foods for the hotter future.”
TCOG is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that manages the first-in-the-nation 2015 designation of Tucson and its southern Arizona foodshed as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy. Formed in 2016, the volunteers on the board of directors represent stakeholders in the local food system, culinary economy, culture and heritage sector, and tourism industry. TCOG has other donor and sponsorship opportunities to support our work to preserve and promote Tucson’s unique food heritage and cuisine and position our diverse culinary assets as a key economic driver, while contributing to local and global conversations on the intersections of food with heritage, creativity, and sustainability.
Learn more about Tucson City of Gastronomy at https://tucson.cityofgastronomy.org
