- An inclusive event with nearly 50 participants at the ONCE headquarters in Cáceres
Cáceres 2031 and the ONCE Social Group celebrated the “Flavors That Live Within Us” experience this Thursday in Cáceres. This innovative event combined gastronomy, music, and emotion to explore sensory diversity as a form of connection and shared cultural creation.
The activity, held at the ONCE headquarters in Cáceres, involved nearly fifty participants, including two deafblind individuals, and is presented as a pilot project within the program of actions that Cáceres 2031 is promoting in its bid to become the European Capital of Culture. The workshop was led by Alexander Calsow, a Chilean expert in applied neurogastronomy and sensory education, who explained how the senses, emotions, and memory intertwine to construct our perception of flavor.
Among those participating in the event were Jorge Suárez, Councilor for Culture, Education, and Commerce of the Cáceres City Council; Isabel Góngora, Director of the ONCE (Spanish National Organization of the Blind) in Cáceres; and Iris Jugo, General Coordinator of the Cáceres 2031 Consortium.
During the session, participants engaged their senses in the union of food and music—those who were not blindfolded did so wearing blindfolds—with a performance by the string quartet from the Cáceres Conservatory. In this way, the audience was able to immerse themselves in an experience where music became flavor and flavor became emotion. Each note evoked a memory, and each aroma opened a door to the imagination, in a sensory dialogue that transcends sight to celebrate human diversity.
“It’s a sensory experience where we have music, emotion, and we give it a flavor. This is based on neurogastronomy and how flavor is created in the brain. It’s a beautiful experience in which we describe each element poetically so that, even without seeing, we can understand what we are experiencing,” explained Calsow.
“People with disabilities are eager for accessible culture, to be able to feel the music… And Cáceres is working towards that. We want to be an active participant; we want to be part of Cáceres 2031. We understand that a bid for culture at the European level must be inclusive, enriching, and inclusive of all kinds of people and all kinds of needs,” stated Isabel Góngora. “It has been very enriching to see how deafblind people experience music, because ultimately, the way we experience culture can be different,” she added.
“The Flavors That Inhabit Us” is the result of a joint effort between Cáceres 2031 and ONCE, with the aim of demonstrating that inclusion is not an abstract concept, but a way of being in the world. Through this initiative, both organizations advocate for an accessible, sensory, and fully human culture, in which everyone can participate not through adaptation, but by design.
With experiences like this, Cáceres 2031 reaffirms its commitment to an open, diverse, and inclusive European Capital of Culture, which recognizes difference as a source of creativity and community.
