Sounds Like Scran is an audio cookbook that gathers audio (and video) postcards – of recorded stories, memories and daily life, experienced through food.
For International Mother Language Day (IMLD) 2021, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) commissioned artist Semay Wu to bring Manchester’s language diversity into focus.
Greater Manchester has around 200 languages and dialects knitted throughout its streets, which are the focus of each page in this cookbook. Contributors were asked to record their own voices describing a story, a moment in their life, in their mother language. Each story has a connection to a particular dish. Sounds Like Scran: An Audio Cookbook is a little window into the lives of those living in Manchester, and the multiplicity of languages spoken in our city. Scroll through the pages to fill your eyes, heart and ears with delicious food, every-day life, and happy memories of re-lived moments, all shared between us through our fundamental connection to food.
Acknowledgements
Semay Wu wishes to acknowledge CFCCA and IMLD for their support and enthusiasm for the project. Sounds Like Scran also received phenomenal support from the wider community outreach organisations of Manchester, for which this project could not have done without: Cracking Good Food, a wonderful social enterprise, dedicated to eradicating food poverty, and to increase food sustainability; Raj Johal from Manchester Settlement, a charity utterly committed to sustainable cycles of community change; and Anita Kanji, a WAITE Wellbeing Leader at the Manchester Deaf Centre, who helped organise and facilitate online sessions for their participants to take part in this project. And to everyone who helped advise along the way, including Suhail Khan, and Gavin Brown, and not least of all, to all the contributors – for all your enthusiasm and warm connections made.