The Ration Rewards cards were created in 2016 for Fair Share Fare’s Food Store at Arts House for the inaugural REFUGE project, where artists, community and emergency services rehearsed a flood scenario.

Fair Share Fare in a suite of publicly engaged activities presented Food Store at REFUGE to act as a data generator - to test, reveal, expose and gain understanding about food knowledge, industriousness and empathy in times of crisis. Participants, as a collective in this performative work, were responsible in sourcing food for 50 overnight REFUGE participants.  For completing the tasks, they were rewarded with rations and these cards. Each of the reward cards share tips, recipes and survivalist DIY thinking should we face food shortages in the future. Drawn from a wide variety of resources such as the City of Melbourne’s archives on WWII rationing and austerity measures, survival guides and settler cookbooks, the suite of cards are intended to offer alternative thinking around self-sufficiency and food provisioning in times of scarcity. To learn more about Fair Share Fare or this project, click here.