Wow, what a few months we have had! The process of applying for our Bronze award with Sustainable Food Places caused us to reflect on past achievements and future plans, and out of this sprung the idea – a fortnight of food-related activity across local businesses and the community sector coming together under the shared aims to:
- Celebrate local food projects that alleviate food poverty and improve access to food
- Encourage growing, cooking and eating together
- Spotlight businesses that champion local, sustainable and affordable food
- Make connections between organisations, businesses and individuals committed to improving the local food system
- Work together to create a good food movement.
Wanting to coincide with the beginning of the Harvest and hoping to catch the tail-end of the summer weather, we opted for 20th September – 6th October. This meant we only had a few months to pull together our messaging and materials, put a call out to our local business and community sector to list activities, alongside planning and promoting our own series of activities and events during the fortnight.
It was a big task to take on but we were thrilled with the response from 34 businesses and organisations listing activities, providing us with a programme of 70 different events happening across the districts of Arun & Chichester. Events ranged from cookery demos to farm tours, pantry sessions to cinema trips, lunch clubs to food growing workshops. We had a full programme of varied activities, many of which were free, some of which are regular activities and others brand new.
Thanks to support from the Chichester Joint Action Group we were able to print copies of our 16-page programme to distribute across the districts, spotlighting the incredible work of our local food businesses and organisations championing access to good food.
We also hosted some of our own events, including the Food Conversations workshops, the Chichester Food Forum and the Littlehampton Apple Day. Take a look at some of the photos from the fortnight below.
We have certainly learned a lot from the experience and are in the process of gathering feedback from people who took part. The main takeaway for us is that with a longer lead-in time and more people involved, we could do this bigger and better next year, so fingers crossed we can make that happen.
If you hosted an activity listed with us, please could you complete this short feedback form and if you attended any of the listed activities, please could you share your views on this form. All feedback helps us to learn and improve upon our work, as well as build up a picture of what people in Arun and Chichester want to see happen towards making good food accessible to all.
