Welcome to Iye Creative Society's Shop Every purchase helps children and their families access programming, workshops, and spaces where they can connect, learn, and share their stories.What you’re supporting 💡Funds from this shop go toward merch supplies, hands-on training and workshops, and program operations that connect community with food futures rooted in culture. Thank you for backing real opportunities for young minds to connect, learn, and grow.

Iye Root Membership is the foundational relationship between a person or organization and Iye Creative Society.It is not a subscription to perks.It is not a donation with benefits.It is not a loyalty program.It is relational accountability: a formal commitment to the principles that Iye is built on, and to the community that is building it.When you join Iye. You say that diasporic food knowledge matters. That cultural food systems are climate adaptation. That land is a living relative, not a resource. That the next generation deserves to grow up connected to food and land through cultural knowledge.Membership is how that commitment becomes infrastructure.OUR BELIEFFood is memory. Memory is currency.Iye Creative Society exists to build thriving, climate-resilient food futures rooted in culture. We serve diasporic children and families in Southern Vancouver Island, and connect them to the crops, the seeds, the stories, and the land knowledge that their communities carried here.The work we do is not supplementary. It is foundational.A child who knows where their food comes from, who knows the migration story of the plantain, the growing conditions for bitter leaf, the way moringa was used by their grandmother's community, carries something that no curriculum can give them and no displacement can take away.Membership at Iye funds that continuity.WHY MEMBERSHIP EXISTSIye was incorporated as a BC Society in January 2026. We are five months old on paper, building on a foundation of community trust, cultural depth, and a growing body of work — including the Cultural Crops Growing Guide, a 27-minute documentary around cultural foods, and the Living Foodways Initiative.We are also building in one of the most difficult funding environments nonprofit organizations have faced in a generation. Grant funding is scarce and often restricted. Charitable registration takes time. Staff capacity is limited.Membership is how we build a funding base that is not dependent on any single funder, any single grant, or any single institutional relationship.A strong membership base gives Iye:Collective voice: community legitimacy that institutional funders and policymakers recognizeFunding legitimacy: recurring, unrestricted revenue that can go where it's neededGovernance strength: an engaged community that strengthens board decision-makingIntergenerational continuity: a relationship with the community that outlasts any program cycleMembership at Iye means infrastructure for resilience.WHO MEMBERSHIP IS FORMembership is open to everyone.Growers: those growing culturally relevant crops in Southern Vancouver Island.Cultural food makers: those uplifting traditional foodways through cooking, sharing, and teaching.Educators: those working with children and families around food, land, and culture.Youth and families: those who want to stay connected to their food heritage and to this community.Diasporic communities: anyone who carries food knowledge across a border and wants to see it honoured.Policy shapers and food system allies: those working to make food systems more just, more culturally responsive, and more climate-resilient. Businesses and institutions: those with capacity to invest in cultural food infrastructure.Membership is not hierarchy. It is a responsibility at different levels.

The Memory Pot Club is a monthly gathering program powered by Iye Creative Society and the Cultural Data Commons. This is not a cooking club. It is a living gathering space for memory, nourishment, storytelling, adaptation, cultural preservation, and embodied learning that’s built around diasporic foodways and the intelligence those foodways carry.Every gathering is a preservation act. Every member is a steward of cultural continuity.OUR BELIEFFood is more than food and it is understood as an information system.Knowledge already moved through spaces such as kitchens, markets, communal cooking, shared meals, mutual aid food spaces, and backyard gatherings. These spaces were never "just social. They are:Mechanism of survival, cooperation and infrastructureLearning environmentsmigration archivesdecentralized knowledge networksRecipes carried geography. Smells carried memory. Techniques carried adaptation. Cooking carried continuity.We exist to honour that, document it, and pass it forward.FOODWAYS ARE INFORMATION SYSTEMSCultural knowledge is not only transmitted through books or institutions.It moves through gesture, favour, taste, rhythm, repetition, observation, conversation, aroma, touch, and communal practice.A pot of sofrito.A congri ritual.A grandmother corrects seasoning by instinct and sensorialThese are technologies of memory.The Memory Pot Club recognizes this and builds its gatherings around it. Members may not initially join "a decentralized diasporic cultural intelligence infrastructure” but they will join the simple breakdown:a cooking clubshared mealsrecipe exchangesfood storytelling nightssensory experienceslearn your grandmother's sofrito or magicrice & beans around the worldfood memory nightsAnd through those gatherings, something deeper emerges: trust, continuity, participation, stewardship, and cultural preservation.THE LIVING COMMONSThe Memory Pot Club is the analog heartbeat of the Cultural Data Commons.Every gathering has the potential to become:an oral historya migration mapa sensory archivea recipe genealogya cultural annotationa preservation actThe archive is not a separate entity from the community. We, the community, are the archive.