If you’ve ever traveled to attend a conference, you know how challenging it can be to actually experience the city you’re visiting or taste food beyond the sad plastic-wrapped sandwiches, limp salads, and pallid buffet-style entrees. But the BLACK COMMUNITIES Conference, taking place April 23–25 at The Carolina Theatre, hopes to remedy that by giving the expected five hundred conference-goers a taste of Durham’s entrepreneurial spirit and food scene with an Africana Market and Food Truck Rodeo.
The three-day multidisciplinary conference, organized by the Institute of African American Research, NCGrowth, Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, and other partners at UNC-Chapel Hill, will host oral presentations, working groups, and panel discussions with a mission to “connect academic researchers and Black Communities across North America to foster collaboration on issues of importance to Black communities,” according to its website.
Though the conference is a paid event, the Africana Market & Food Truck Rodeo is open to everyone; conference attendees, downtown workers, tourists, or anyone who’s hungry and curious are invited to stop by the Durham Convention Center Plaza at the Carolina Theatre between eleven a.m. and six p.m. daily to sample some of the Triangle’s finest food truck fare. The lineup will rotate daily; look for sweet potato black bean spring rolls from Soul Fresh Spring Rolls; homey comfort food from Let’s Eat Home Style; and fish and chips and fried seafood from Oak City Fish & Chips. The Africana Market will feature African apparel and jewelry from vendors like Vivid Emporium, Chick Baubles & Bling, Bits & Pieces Silversmith, and J & C Apparel.
“We are thrilled to be a part of it and coordinate a vendor event which would bring the local business community out and tie in the food trucks to highlight the foodie destination that Durham has become known for in the last five years,” says Denise Hester, vice president of the Phoenix Event Center who was tasked with organizing the market and food truck event. “We’re trying to tie all those things together as [a] whole and give people a shopping experience that’s right there at the venue.”
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