About this event
Food brings people together – join us for this gathering of community food projects, be inspired by one another, find ways to collaborate, hear about new research around community food projects, and sit down together to enjoy a freshly prepared surplus food lunch.
Teignbridge CVS and CAG Devon are delighted to be jointly hosting this event at the Courtenay Centre in Newton Abbot. We’re excited to be joined by friends from some of our innovative community food projects, including:
- Food in Community CIC – FiC collects and redistributes surplus food, runs cooking workshops and food surplus cafes, some gleaning, and lots of other great stuff! They’ll be sharing about how to run food surplus cafés, and deliver a zero waste cooking workshop.
- Newton Abbot Community Fridge – set up in 2021 at the Courtenay Centre, the fridge is available to local people to either take food that isn’t going to be used , from shops and supermarkets or surplus items donated by local people. The aim is to help reduce food waste whilst also giving people a helping hand.
- Vicary’s Field Community Garden – this is a key project of Transition Newton Abbot (TNA), and aims to provide a pleasant community space and growing area for local people, using organic methods to grow fruit and vegetables. The Garden also hosts events and activities that allow people to meet each other, learn new skills, and contribute to worthwhile and interesting community projects.
- Teign Valley Larder CIC – set up during the first lockdown, TVL has five community larders where people can donate food and cash for food and those in need can come to collect essential items. The larder works closely with other organsiations in the valley including the churches, Teign Greens and others etc. adding value to their food offer. Corony Edwards from TVL will take us through a practical activity, mapping what’s happening where and identifying opportunities to connnect to others to add value to what we all do.
In addition, Maresa Bossano from Love Food CIC will be sharing “hot off the press” finds from her research. Commissioned by Teignbridge CVS, Maresa is exploring how food can be used to support a range of projects that support those most struggling in our communities around affordability, accessibility, skills building, social isolation etc. She will share some of her findings around;
- Social Supermarkets
- Solidarity Box Schemes, and
- Community Buying Groups.
It’s a sharing, and hopefully inspiring, event. We’ll be hearing first-hand from folk involved in growing, gleaning, redistributing, cooking and sharing food. We’ll be exploring at how these activities help grow community connections, tackle food inequalities and reduce food waste.
We’ll be hearing about new ideas around social supermarkets and how they work, how to set up food-buying groups and welcome people sharing their ideas and aspirations for food in their locality.
We’ll be mapping who’s doing what where, but also looking at how can we join together with other things happening in our village or town to add value to what we do. For example, offering seedlings at a community larder to not only provide food but also to encourage folk to start to grow their own.
At lunchtime we’ll sit down together to enjoy a delicious meal, prepared by one of our contributors, Food in Community CIC, together with volunteers from the event.
This event is open to anyone who has a real interest is using food to build community connections, skills and confidence, address food inequality and to reduce food waste. Please spread the word.
Charge
There is no charge for this event. If you wish to bring along a food item which could then be used by Food in Community or in the Community Fridge onsite, that would be wonderful!
A suggested donation for lunch will be £5, on a Pay-As-You-Feel basis. Donation pots will be available.
As this is a great opportunity to network, you are also invited to bring along any leaflets about your own project for others to take away.
We look forward to seeing you there.