On September 14th, MULTIGRAIN was hosted by MILK – a wonderful community space in the South Side of Glasgow. This event was presented by Thinking Culture as part of East and Southeast Asian Heritage Month, with support from the University of Glasgow Global Majority Network. Curated by Abie Soroño, MULTIGRAIN beautifully wove together community, culture, stories, histories, and importantly – cooking demonstrations and sharing food with one another.
Abie Soroño is a Filipino community and cultural engagement curator connecting research, arts, and underrepresented communities through strategic programming and collaborative partnerships. Abie specialises in cross-disciplinary programming, inclusive community outreach, and ethical engagement practices, with experience in exhibition making, digital media production, training material development, multimedia storytelling, and creating accessible pathways between academic and community spaces. She has previously worked with GoMA, Glasgow International, Tramway, Glasgow School of Art, South East Integration Network, and BRAID UK to deliver public engagement events in the context of marginalised communities in the creative industries.
Dr Kevin Leomo is a Scottish-Filipino sound artist, researcher, curator, and community organiser. Kevin is the Community and Engagement Manager for the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Glasgow, where he oversees public engagement and cultural programmes. He is Co-Director of the Creatives of Colour Festival, co-lead for the Laboratory for Civic Arts Research training programme, Director of experimental music collective Sound Thought, board member for Scottish Music Centre, and a member of University and College Union and the Musicians’ Union. His practice as an artist and activist is guided by an intersectional, decolonial, and anti-racist ethos.
Kanin, bigas, kan-on, bahaw, palay, sinaing, tutong.
Rice, rice, rice, rice, rice, rice, rice, rice.
And this linguistic abundance isn’t accidental. It speaks to rice’s centrality in Filipino life, how deeply ingrained into our survival, our rituals, our sense of home. When you have that many words for something, it’s not just food. It’s identity. In Tagalog, there’s overlap with referring to rice and the act of eating, “kain” means “eat” and “kanin” means “rice”. For East and Southeast Asians, rice is a sacred and humble grain; it’s in our tastebuds, our language, our people, our everyday, our cultures, and even to how our bodies digest it in all the ways it can.
But one thing we all have in common is how sacred this humble grain is; in our tastebuds, our language, our people, our everyday, our cultures, and even to how our bodies digest it in all the ways it can.
Celebrating ESEA Heritage Month
September is when we mark ESEA Heritage Month across the UK, Thinking Culture at the University of Glasgow hosted MULTIGRAIN: a panel discussion and communal dining experience that centres rice as both sustenance and symbol. Alongside Kevin, I’m honoured to organise this event featuring panellists Noby Leong, Yuen Kwan Humble, Julze Alejandre, and Sean Wai Keung, moderated by Abie Soroño.
Noby Leong holds a PhD in Chemistry, his research was on cyclodextrin that are ever present in our everyday food and medicine, materials and its many different applications. He spoke about rice’s history from the Yangtze river to Southeast Asia. Noby currently runs a podcast Satay? Okay? where he explores foods that shaped Malaysia.
Yuen Kwan Humble, who regularly collaborates with Ricefields Arts and Cultural Centre shared her stories of how rice has become a symbol of solace when she first moved to Glasgow 10 years ago and how she grows different kinds of rice and produce in her backyard, nurturing solace into more than survival: nourishment/sustenance.
Julze Alejandre has a long and deep relationship with rice, coming from a family of palay (unhusked rice) dealers and rice dealers, with grandparents who have built their livelihood around rice, to Julze, rice is more than just stock, it’s commodity. For the event, he shared its economic and cultural importance as well as gave insights into his professional career working in Nutrition at the Department of Health in the Philippines where he worked on food fortification to address micronutrient deficiencies.
Sean Wai Keung is a writer and performance maker based in Glasgow. He is a published writer and for MULTIGRAIN, he shared insights from his poetry collection “Sikfan Glaschu” as well as the many roles rice plays in diaspora communities. Having written extensively on food’s role in hospitality, Sean talked about its vitality in its economics, community building, potlucks, and takeaway culture.
We also enjoyed vegan Filipino rice cakes from Radekano Bakery during the panel discussion and communal dining experience. Radekano is a home business that supplies rice cakes to the Philippine Store. In Filipino culture, we have a tradition of including at least one kakanin (rice cake) on our New Year’s holiday spread—a portmanteau of kain (to eat) and kanin (rice)—to symbolise our hope of sticking together and keeping our families and friends close.
Rice as Revolution
For millennia, rice has sustained billions across Asia. But it’s never been just about agriculture; it’s always been political. In the Philippines, land reform struggles have centred on rice fields, with farmers fighting for the right to own the land they cultivate. The Sakada workers in Hawaii, many of Filipino descent, laboured in brutal conditions on plantations, their stories mirroring broader narratives of migration and exploitation. Rice becomes a lens through which we understand colonialism, labour rights, and food sovereignty.
In contemporary contexts, particularly during election season in the Philippines, rice comes in bags—bags of “hope,” plastic sacks that supposedly carry a solution to poverty. And there’s this analogy we say: “broken rice, broken promises”. Perhaps each grain represents an hour of unpaid labor, marking the divide between those who dine at the high tables of Malacañang and those who won’t have a single grain to eat by week’s end.
We discussed the centrality of rice to the diasporic experience for East and Southeast Asians – rice is a staple for members of our communities. Rice is also inseparable from our colonial histories – its strength in our resistance and the fact that rice was not taken and adopted by colonisers in the same way other “exotic” goods such as spices and teas were.
When we gather around rice, we’re gathering around history.
Building Community, One Grain at a Time
What excites me most about MULTIGRAIN is its embodiment of Thinking Culture’s ethos: working with DIY, grassroots, and BIPOC creatives to create spaces that centre our stories, our foods, our ways of being. This isn’t rice as an exotic curiosity. This is rice as homecoming.
During the panel, we asked each speaker for a quickfire response to “What’s your go to, comforting rice-dish you make at home”. Rice is the basis for dishes that both nourish and comfort us – Filipino lugaw, Korean bibimbap, Malaysian nasi lemak, Chinese congee, and Taiwanese lu rou fan. Rice can be an affordable daily essential, or more expensive grains can be a decadent treat – it can be survival, it can be a source of care for our friends and family. For anyone who’s been to an ESEA potluck, rice will be present in many different delicious forms. Through centuries of colonialism, cultivation, and kinship, rice is identity; rice is home in a bowl.
There’s something revolutionary about cooking and eating together, especially in academic spaces that haven’t always welcomed our bodies, our languages, our cultures. Fried rice, with its infinite variations across Asian diasporas, becomes a common language.
Yuen treated us to a cooking demonstration, sharing with us many of these variations. Attendees had the opportunity to join Yuen in the kitchen and with her friendly support and guidance, prepared vegetables – carrots, spring onions, peppers. On an exceptionally gray and rainy Sunday afternoon, we became a family preparing a meal together. Eager faces watched through the kitchen service window as the aroma of fried rice filled the space – from egg fried rice to cumin fried rice as well as veggie-mince rice for the vegans amongst the group.
MULTIGRAIN, the title of the event, comes from our diverse identities and bodies, as well as the various grains we consume. This includes rice in its different forms: brown, black, red, white, and many others we may not have encountered yet. The communal dining portion of MULTIGRAIN isn’t just a nice addition; it is the point. As we know, knowledge isn’t only cerebral; it’s tasted, smelled, and shared across a table.
To mark ESEA last year, we had the pleasure of hosting Eddie Kim of Gomo Kimchi for a workshop exploring food, family, and home. Taylor Taeyon Song prepared an excellent resource for attendees on how to decolonise their use of language around food. All too often, indigenous and local knowledge are ignored or whitewashed in the service of Western ideologies and frameworks – something all too prevalent when it comes to food.
The process of decolonising our language, our knowledge systems is not an easy one – it’s ongoing, challenging work, but it’s essential. One way to begin is at the table – ideally, sharing food with others, in a communal experience. Lay down your Western frameworks, put down your fork and knife – and use your hands to eat and sustain yourself.
When we say kain tayo (let’s eat), we’re extending more than food. We’re extending belonging and inviting you to eat with us.
