One of five artworks curated for Terroir 2016, an international symposium featuring innovative speakers and workshops related to food, culture and community, Soil is the Mother was a map-based, participatory installation celebrating soil as the basis for terrestrial life and the primary ‘mother’ ingredient contributing to the essence and cultural variability of terroir – the taste of a place. Terrior delegates arrived to take a name tag from the area on a map of soil geologies that they call home. Returning throughout the day, guests posted hand written notes onto their home soil to collectively transform the original map into a conversation billboard — an analogue feed of reflections about local terroir and the role we all play in shaping, removing, and altering the landscape of food.