Food group meeting – Mon 11 February

Notes by Ann Baldridge

Present: Jo, Viv, Ann, Simon B, Simon P, and Andi

The meeting focused on our plans to hold our first event – a big day dedicated to raising awareness about food issues and sharing practical skills.

Venue: Given that we have no funding yet, we need to find a venue that is central but free of charge to hire, or who would agree to host the event for us. The Cowley Club was suggested. Other ideas were Friends Meeting House, though we understand their hire fee is above and beyond what we could afford. Ann will contact them to explore whether they might be willing to make an exception with their hire fee. The Brighton Peace and Environment Centre was also suggested but it was thought that this venue might be too small, but also may put some people off coming, especially those who don’t associate themselves with being an ‘environmentalist’. Cowley Club’s central location, good level of passing traffic and the fact that it doesn’t charge a hire fee put it at the top of the list. We will confirm the venue at the next meeting.
Action: Ann to contact Friends Meeting House

Activities

Seed planting sessions: the Whitehawk Community Food Project have agreed to run two sessions: one around seed planting and another on picking out and re-potting. They can supply seeds and compost. We will either ask people to bring their own pot (or even a yogurt tub) or see if any of the gardening centres can donate pots to us.
Action: Simon P to plan the seed sessions.

Lunch: Jo suggested we have a lunch break with home-cooked, local food. The Cowley Club has a kitchen we can use to prepare a lunch for participants on the day. We would charge about £2.50 to recoup the costs of food and to hopefully generate a small amount of funds for the group.
Action: Simon Powell to ask Simon Parker if he would be up for leading on the cooking.


Activities for kids: we discussed ideas for activities that kids can get involved in such as badge making, a fruit shy, drawing vegetables, a quiz, seed planting. No firm decisions were made.
Action: Viv to think about children’s activities and report back at the next meeting.


Talks: suggested topics for talks included climate change and food, permaculture, a presentation from the London-based food growing project Food Up Front, a talk from a biodynamic farmer or from Compassion in World Farming to highlight the impact the meat industry has on the environment and to offer suggestions of things people can do to reduce their impact (including eating less but high quality meat and veganism). Alice from Trapese Network has offered to do a talk / workshop on the food system from a global and local perspective. We decided, in the first instance, to pursue Alice’s offer, Food Up Front, and a permaculture talk (given that Transition is largely based around permaculture principles).
Action: Jo to speak to Alice and Food Up Front
Action: Ann to invite someone from Brighton Permaculture Trust to speak


Film screening: we discussed doing a showing of The Future of Food and we’ve found someone with a copy we can use. We might hold a discussion about the film after the screening. We will need to think about who we can ask to come and lead a discussion on GM.

Local food awareness-raising: we discussed having a stall to compare a local veg box to a box of the same veg bought from the supermarket. This would help to promote local veg box schemes and to show people how cost-effective it is to get a veg box, plus highlight the benefits of eating seasonally. We will also have a food miles quiz in which the person who comes closest to guessing the mileage on each box will win the box.
Action: Simon B to contact the local veg box schemes to see if any of the farms would be willing to donate a box of produce and to come along to promote their service (or to send information we can put on display).


Publicity: we had some initial thoughts about where, how and when to publicise the event. We agreed that 3 weeks before the event would be a good time to begin promoting it. We will ask Rocks and The Argus to advertise it, as well as the numerous ‘what’s on in Brighton’ websites, email networks, the Food Partnership and Transition B&H websites. Publicity will be discussed in greater detail at the next meeting.

This day will be about awareness-raising and practical skills that people can take away with them. We thought that ending the day with an open discussion or debate might help people to voice their views and to discuss the new things they’ve learned. We also discussed preparing a leaflet with 10 practical things people can do to reduce their impact on the environment via their food choices.


Next meeting: the next meeting will be on Tuesday the 11th of March at the Earth and Stars pub at 7:30pm. At this meeting we will feed back on our actions from this meeting, finalise the programme for the big food day, decide on a name for the day, and discuss our publicity strategy.