Transition Leicester Food Group
Why a food group?
At present, the food supply for our city is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Conventional farming uses oil-based pesticides, fertilizers made using natural gas, and oil-based fuels for machinery used to work the fields. Food is imported into Leicester from other parts of the country and other parts of the world, using fossil-fuel-based transportation.
As fossil fuel availability begins to decline over the coming years, we need to urgently develop the infrastructure and skills that will allow Leicester to feed itself in the future. This will mean developing local and organic food production, starting urban agriculture projects, planting fruit and nut trees in the city, teaching people the skills they need to grow food at home - there's lots of work to be done!
What's happening?
The Food group met for the first time on Tuesday 3rd June 2008, in the Methodist Church on Bishop Street in Leicester city centre. A report from that meeting can be read here.
Other meetings have followed more or less monthly and have focussed on organising jam making and food preserving workshops, 'bramble ramble' walks.
We've also had information stalls at food related events in and around Leicester, like the Good Food Fair at Belgrave Hall on 20th and 21st September and the Brocks Hill Grow-Your-Own event in Oadby on 27th September 2008.
The first Transition Cafe on Sat 27th Sept 08 also saw the Food Group busy baking, serving drinks and generally chatting about Transition-related matters.
On the 8th of October 2008 the Food Group run a very successful event called Harvest Inspiration, with the purpose of getting people inspired about starting to grow and harvest some of their own food. The nice weather and the central location helped in making it a very busy day where people could have a go at apple juicing, get gardening advice from expert growers, sample a variety of home-grown and home-made food and drinks, get refreshments while children were entertained by a storyteller. For many of us it was a great opportunity to make links and connections.
Next meetings
The next Food Group meeting will be:
Tuesday 24th August, 7.30pm, at 56 Henton Rd, Leicester LE3 6AX
Attendance is open to anyone but please drop us a line to give us an idea of numbers. (lisam183 [at] hotmail.com or dani.pattuzzi [at] googlemail.com)
Minutes from last meeting
Food Group Meeting 22: 22nd June 2010
You can also read the minutes from all the previous meetings here
Forthcoming events
The next Transition Café will take place on Saturday 17th July at the usual time and place: 12 till 4, Bishop Street Methodist Church. Come along to say hello, for a chat and a nibble, to find out more about the Transition movement and what's going on in and around Leicester. There'll be drinks and home-made food offered by a team of volunteers. If you'd like to contribute to the catering efforts you could bring along a sweet or savoury home-made dish or just offer to help serve drinks at the Café . (For more info contact Elspeth on elspethsparkle [at] ntlworld.com or Lucy on charlucy [at] googlemail.com). For more information about the Transition Café and activities that take place during the Café click here.
Future Projects
Some ideas and projects for the next year or two include:
- the planting of a Transition Leicester Orchard
- the creation of a Map of green/food production areas in the City
- setting up a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) project
- promoting here in Leicester a similar initiative to the Abundance projects in Sheffield and Manchester.
Related projects
The Campaign to Protect Rural England together with Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming are promoting a project called Mapping Local Food Webs and are recruiting volunteers to research existing local food networks across England in urban and rural locations. The village of Birstall was selected as the area for the pilot project in Leicestershire. The idea is that by mapping and documenting a food web we can increase people’s knowledge of where food comes from and how it is produced, distributed and sold, therefore building awareness amongst local people of the importance of their local food network.
If you want to know more about the Mapping Local Food Webs Project please read here If you then feel you would like to volunteer for the project, please get in touch with Lisa Michael on lisam183 [at] hotmail.com
How can I get involved?
If you're interested in any of the above projects and would like to get involved or need more details about anything to do with the Food group, email Lisa Michael on lisam183 [at] hotmail.com or Dani Pattuzzi on dani.pattuzzi [at] googlemail.com