Exclusive – Meet documentary makers Common Table Creative

The English family, by Oliver’s account, have always been deeply involved in the world of food. He and his brother grew up the sons of two chefs, with Oliver himself studying hospitality at university before coming to run his father’s restaurant business.

But despite food taking up a large portion of his mental space since birth (beyond just our instinctual lilt towards it three times a day), it took a while for Oliver to realise that the depth of his knowledge of the industry was only skin deep.

He describes an epiphany moment whilst eating at a restaurant he opened in Abu Dhabi as a 20-something restaurant mogul. ‘…halfway through my meal, I literally just fell back and looked at all this food, and I was like “wait a minute, where the f*ck did all this food come from?”’ Forgetting he’s talking to a Brit and an Australian, he apologises for swearing. ‘It occurred to me that I had never asked that question.’

A journey inwards for the trio necessitated a journey out. And I mean way out. CTC have now travelled the world, around the US and Central America, and Europe, talking to the hitherto faceless people behind the food we consume every day. Their initial dream of producing a feature film would eventually evolve into Feeding Tomorrow and a fully fledged production company.

Indeed, eating is the end point of a process we’re uncomfortably ignorant about. Whilst consumption is a facet of muscle memory necessary to survive, like blinking, unlike blinking consumption involves choices. What we eat has to be sourced for us, and given that most of us in the West live in urban centres, it often has to be sourced from far away.

This simple process of supply and demand has dangerously metastasised thanks to corporatisation, market capitalism, and a growing population, into something that our agrarian ancestors would struggle to recognise.

Our tendency towards over-consumption has led to an untenable amount of food being produced on our planet every day, wreaking havoc on the environment. It’s the express job of the mega-corporations that produce this food to distract us from its origins, and to keep us from interrogating our position in a global supply chain.

Moreover, the structures of capitalist individualism that exist all around us teach us not to care about the supply chain even if we do ‘find out’. Their marketing teams feed us with over-processed indifference.

Oliver and his comrades at CTC aim to be the balm to this ignorance, by re-introducing us to not only our lived relationship with food, but what that relationship could be if we were to align our consumer habits with more sustainable practices. They believe that reconnecting with farmers is a critical piece to moving toward a more just, regenerative, and equitable food system. The company’s films focus on the deeply powerful impact everyday citizens food choices are.

So far in CTC’s projects there’s been a heavy emphasis on the importance of regenerative farming: a process that works with natural ecosystems to grow crops. However, all elements of a potential future plan for food innovation, including education, will be touched on in Feeding Tomorrow.

I ask Oliver about the meaning behind the company’s name. ‘The name came from the idea that at the table we’re all equals. When we come together at the table we are… united in this cause and the issues that we talk about related to the environment and food systems reform… all of these things impact everybody.’

Spoken with all of the bombast and earnestness I’ve come to expect from Americans, and in particular Californians (it seems he’s settling in well to his new locale) Oliver’s words are a call to revolution.

It seems apt, therefore, that the backdrop of our June conversation is the mass global protest movement in support of the BLM movement after the death of George Floyd. Here too young people are taking up arms against systems that have boxed us into set narratives, whether that be the narrative of climate change, race relations, or inequality.

At the beginning of our conversation Oliver reflects on the unrest in his country. ‘This moment has made us realise that all of our systems are broken, and they’re not designed to apply equal justice to everybody nor to apply equal justice to our planet and environment.’

‘This is our moment to transform the way that we exist and live in relationship to each other and our planet. And it can be the biggest transformation to justice, to clean energy, to regenerative food systems, and to economic policies that take care of people and don’t push people to the margins. This has to be our biggest moment.’

CTC are holding up a mirror to society, and through their own actions in time I’m sure they will reflect the world they want to see. Viva la revolution.