Food Open Space
What will Lewes be eating after cheap oil and how will we provide it?
Saturday 5 May, Market Lane Garage, 10am - 4pm
This was Transition Town Lewes's first open space event. It was held, in association with Artemis arts, in beautiful, derelict, Market Lane Garage in North Street. A banner out front announced the venue as 'Accident Repair Centre', which seemed fitting.
About 50 people were at the opening of the space. Posters on the wall let us know open space principles, and times and places of the mini-conferences we were about to set up.
Adrienne from Transition Town Lewes opened the event and the Open Space facilitator, Una Nicholson, told us how it all works.
The central question of the day was: What will Lewes be eating after cheap oil and how will we provide it?
Anyone who felt passionate about a subject, even if they knew nothing about it, and were willing to host a mini-conference, wrote down the topic and the timeslot and place in the room.
There were four sessions during the day, each with several conferences on different themes. See below for summaries of the conferences. Discussions ranged from peeing on compost to whether tea might come to Britain on Clipper ships. One farmer had calculated how much land it would take to feed Lewes on our current diet - many were surprised at how little it would take. Another group was surprised to find that almost all common foodstuffs have in the past been easily grown on the land surrounding Lewes.
We broke for a delicious lunch made from local seasonal ingredients by Sarah Bristow - many were inspired at how food can be so delicious and simple. More conversations were had over lunch and tea.
At the end of the day we gathered together in a big circle again and everyone had the chance to give feedback and reveal one step they were going to take. You will also find these below.
Adrienne closed the event by thanking everyone and encouraging people to take these next steps and form or join planning groups.
Summaries of conferences
Crop for the shop & meal assembly
Other than veg – where will our grains and proteins come from?
High yielding, low maintenance home gardens
From here to there – can we map the change process?
How to involve the wider community, tackling inequalities and being inclusive
Enroling the local producers in TTL vision
Optimising nutrition and health through food processing including cooking temperature
The future consumers (and gardeners and cooks) of Lewes
Converging at the end of the day
Click here for all this information on one page for an easy download.
Go to the Forum for more discussion about issues such as water collection, growing support and farmers markets
Get involved: contact hello [at] TransitionTownLewes.org.uk
