Community Food Skills Working Group
This group exists to celebrate and nurture the many different skills that we need in order to enjoy a healthy, fair and resilient food system in North Lancashire. It facilitates strategy and collaborative projects that build our communities’ food skills and commonly held resources.
As a group, we take a holistic approach to the kinds of skills that we support. Think of food skills and you probably think of learning to cook, or learning to grow food. However, other skills are also needed for a healthy food system to thrive. For example, schools need support to engage pupils and teachers with getting pupils outside and integrating food into the curriculum, allotments and community gardens need places to network and share ideas and regenerative businesses need to be able to flourish and grow.
This group meets every two months.
This group’s two year priorities:
1. Nurture and embed the Where the Wildings Are! schools project so that it can enjoy a secure income stream based around two staff members running food and nature play activities within the school day as well as during after school and holiday periods.
2. Grow the North Lancashire Food Champions network for individuals. Develop a stable income stream so this work can continue to promote, connect and nurture community action around good food. As part of this, we aim to identify good food mentors, trainers, influencers and champions, and develop a process for highlighting and connecting these people with local groups and projects.
3. Continue to develop North Lancashire’s community chef network through network building events, training, micro-commissions and through design and input into workshops, classes, events, market demos and other opportunities.
4. Continue to co-create recipes for a Tastes of North Lancashire Menu, supported by advice from nutritionists.
5. Continue to develop links and collaborate with other local projects which have related aims around community food, nature and sustainability activities. These include:
- Lancaster District Green Spaces
- Lune Valley Beekeepers
- Morecambe Bay Curriculum
- Grow Caton
- Sanctuary Cook Alongs
- Sew and Sow Libraries
6. Continue to enable, promote or host training and skill share events around:
- Community leadership
- Citizen journalism
- Setting up a community garden, project or food club
- Permaculture design, seed saving and plant grafting
- Growing your own and cultivating biodiversity – adapted for windowsill, backyard, alley, allotment and community growing
- Cooking seasonally from scratch
- Preserving & fermentation
7. Continue to enable, promote and host community events and celebrations, including:
- Community food conversations
- Forage/nature walks
- Potato days and seed swaps
- Harvest feasts
- Community cooking and community meals
- Apple pressing
- Guerrilla gardening
Case Studies
How can neighbourhoods get together to reduce waste and crea...
Share the Harvest is a campaign that encourages everyone in ...
Could business food waste in North Lancashire district be co...
Growing Food & Community Lottery Funded Training FoodFut...
