Fungi Futures: Mushrooms in Flavor & Fermentation — Somerville Fermentation Festival

Fungi Futures: The Transformative Role of Mushrooms in Flavor, Fermentation, and Forests

While enjoying tasty mushroom treats, we will collaboratively learn how mushrooms are transforming nutrition and environmental technology. We will demystify how mycelium, our planet’s neural network that fruits mushrooms, created life on our planet and sustains us even today. We will explore how cultures around the world are embracing mushrooms and fermentation to live long, healthful lives. With hands-on activities, we will learn how mushroom technologies like mycocrete are creating a habitable future for us all. Perfect for beginners and advanced learners alike, this talk will make complex principles accessible.

About the Speaker

James Davis is a muralist, musician, and mushroom foraging instructor, organizing community campaigns to bring people together in nature. As the founder of Bay Staters for Creative Well-Being, he has shepherded the passage of over 30 laws restoring community access to medicines like psilocybin mushrooms, improving the sustainability of city food purchases, expanding labor rights, and protecting animals. His background is bridging ecology and public policy, having worked as a legislative specialist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Boston, Berkeley (CA), and Taizhong Taiwan. For fun, he loves board games, movies, languages, and petting other people's dogs. He's originally from Kansas, and he lives part-time in Chile to avoid New England winters. Follow @baystaters @notorious.jpd

Part of the Somerville Fermentation Festival 2026

This session is part of the second annual Somerville Fermentation Festival — a bubbling celebration of fermented foods and the people (and microbes!) who make them.