THE BREAD METHOD

The key to the amazing spread and success of the BREAD Movement and the Bread Houses Network is due to its ultimate simplicity: you do not need anything else but flour, water, and hands! And as most with great ideas, it was simply the change of a few aspects of a familiar local practice and symbol – like bread – and it can turn into a catalyzer for cooperation and problem solving to building sense of community in highly-mixed, inter-ethnic neighborhoods around the world.

HERE BELOW ARE BASIC STEPS in the Bread Method which can always be modified to include  local arts forms and strategies.

Steps in Workshops, Classes, and Community Activities Parallels between bread-making and problem solving and community building

• Aerating (called ”humanizing”) the flour: during this process, begin to freely brainstorm ideas on a certain topic; as ideas are let out of one’s mind to “breathe” and shared with others, more possibilities open up for them to acquire oxyden and be”humanized”and realized
• Sifting the flour: beginning a gradual process of ordering the ideas in thematic categories
• Adding the yeast (and salt and sugar): the facilitator adds critical analysis and more ideas not considered so far by the participants, acting as a catalyst for new ideas
• Adding the water, gradually mixing and kneading long, with balanced pressure: a process of consolidating the initial and the latter ideas into a coherent system with well-defined and also inter-connected spheres useful in an integrated, holistic approach to social well-being
• Letting the dough “sleep”/rise (40 minutes to an hour): avoiding hurried conclusions and actions, leave time for ideas to “sleep over,” to germinate and evolve, so that the ensuing action has much greater chance to gain success and sustainability;
• Baking the bread (if no oven is available, each person can take the risen dough home to bake): engage local volunteers (from all ages) to animate the baking time with arts/creative activities and workshops that could also have themes about ecology and sustainable living (here is a small list of possibilities: write and read poetry, draw and paint, knit and embroider, carve wood, play a musical instrument, sing, dance, rap, story-telling (collecting local histories), create theater skits and scenarios, create short documentaries, develop local photography, etc.)
• Breaking the bread: break the divisions between professions and isolated local organizations, as people from diverse professions and age groups get used to regular art and weekend outdoor activities beyond the bread-making

FACTORS IN SUSTAINABILITY

Tips for continuity in community programs and local voluntary engagement

• Shifting the time-bound project thinking: Project to Program Shift
• Shifting the money-based project limitations: Assess your local assets, not problems, as a proven “asset-based development approach” in positive psychology
• Shifting the place-less (home-less) project activities: Strive to connect action to place (ex: regular activities at a community cultural center), creating meaning and belonging to a place through Em-placed Programs
• Shifting the outcome-based emphasis in project thinking to a sensitivity to the process how social relations evolve toward shared goals

WHY BREAD?

• Bread is universally present and loved around the world (even rice and corn-based cultures have rice and corn breads), consumed by people without division of economic status, age, gender, ethnicity, religion, education,etc: therefore, bread is a universal experience and a universal language to unite and educate
• Can be made by anyone, from child to grandparent, and is at the same time the most entertaining cooking activity
• When people share food, they are very much likely to establish peace and cooperation
• Creating, not passively consuming, bread and art inspires the confidence that there are creative solutions to any problem, and that problems are not as grave as imagined