This October, gather at The Saltmother’s Table for a free coastal feast inspired by future harvests from Intertidal Allotment, a long-term project by Andrew Merritt that proposes the world’s first coastal allotment on the north shores of Sheppey.
The intertidal zone is the area of seashore covered at high tide and uncovered at low tide, a place of rich biodiversity and a site of encounter. In this shifting space between the tides, the sea meets soil, the Thames Estuary meets the North Sea, fresh water meets salt, and humans meet non-humans.
Falling just after the Harvest Moon (the full moon nearest the autumn equinox), The Saltmother’s Table is a gathering to celebrate abundance and shared ritual through eating together, set in the majestic halls of the exquisitely restored Sheerness Dockyard Church. Conceived and prepared by artist and researcher Cherry Truluck, this free, celebratory meal will playfully make use of local ingredients, wild foods and the plants and animals that could one day be cultivated on community plots in a coastal allotment.
Join us for a convivial gathering peppered with quiet moments for tasting the coast and sensing the tides. Each course will celebrate coastal ingredients and will also write an edible chapter in a new fable for Sheppey. The meal will honour ‘the Saltmother’, a guardian of brackish waters and keeper of the tideline’s many inhabitants. The Saltmother invites you to join her in tasting a meeting of worlds.
For those who want to, we invite you to precede the meal (and to work up an appetite) with a guided walk along Sheppey’s coastline. The walk will begin at 11:30 at Ship on Shore beach, where you’ll have a chance to view the current Intertidal Allotment prototypes, and end at the Dockyard Church in time for the start of the meal.
Spaces are limited, so book now to secure your free spot!
The event is kindly supported by The National Lottery Community Fund through their Climate Action Fund.
Garrison Road
Sheerness
Isle of Sheppey
ME12 1ED
Cherry Truluck is an artist and researcher, who tends towards edible, convivial, collaborative and sometimes curatorial work. Her transdisciplinary practice explores symbiosis, attunement and interdependence in more-than-human ecologies, as both an artistic strategy and agroecological methodology. Working with community building, plant science, cooking, farming and performance, she seeks rhythms and temporalities in the dialogue that food creates between the body and the land, leading audiences on journeys of speculative fabulation through muddy landscapes.
Cherry has been working with food and conviviality as a means of exploring interlocking cycles of time and growth for several years, most recently collaborating with the Conscious Food Systems Alliance to embed mindful eating into her practice. She is also working on a PhD with the UK Food Systems Centre for Doctoral Training and based at the University of Aberystwyth.
→ Dietaries
The meal will be served as a fixed menu with herbivore (vegan) and omnivore (including dairy and fish/seafood) options. We will endeavour to cater for any allergies as long as you notify us in advance, but please note that all the food will be prepared in a single kitchen. Please select your chosen option at the point of booking and let us know if you have any allergies or access needs. It will not be possible to make changes on the day.
→ Getting there
Sheppey Dockyard Church is a 6 min walk from Sheerness-on-Sea station. There is limited parking available at Sheppey Dockyard Church and additional parking nearby: along the sea wall in Blue Town (free) or at Bridge Street car park (ME12 1RH, £2.80 for 2 hours). Toilets, including disabled facilities, are available on the ground floor.