The Table
A working kitchen and dining room in Accra. The kitchen was the first institution, and it is still the one where this knowledge lives. Resident elder knowledge keepers, the Aunties, structure each season's menu around their knowledge, and a paying public gathers weekly at the table. The table is not a fundraiser for the work. The table is the work: transmission happens in sight of the people it feeds.
The Fellows
Each season pairs an Auntie in residence with a cohort of young Ghanaian women who apprentice under her: cooking for the table, learning the techniques, and trained to document what they learn. In time the fellowship extends to practicum fellows from the diaspora and visiting masters from across the world. The titles are meant to be carried for life.
The Works
The Institute's founder carries the argument into the world as art and as writing: large-scale installations, books, and objects that make African culinary inheritance impossible to ignore. Each work funds research and documentation that returns to the archive.
The Archive. Everything taught at the Institute is recorded: technique films, oral histories, ingredient maps, recipes with their keepers' names attached permanently. The archive operates under an ethical framework of prior informed consent, benefit sharing, and community-controlled access. The communities who share knowledge remain its owners. We are custodians, not collectors.