Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Lasagna Love’s mission is simple: feed families, spread kindness, and strengthen communities. Their goal is to not only help address food insecurity, but also provide a simple act of welcome comfort and kindness during times of uncertainty and stress.
Imagine a tropical paradise alive with plants and animals, all living in perfect harmony and producing plentiful food for local people. You might be imagining somewhere like South America, but this story is actually set in Devon, England.
CH’s Mini-Garden project was the perfect solution to reaching those with limited lawn-space and reducing in-person contact during the pandemic.
Thus began the edible houseplant and tropicals project. I’m hardly the only one doing things like this, but I’m determined to see what I can accomplish in particular, and how I can help others profit from it.
For today’s mutual-aid societies, the catch line is often “solidarity, not charity.”
Community Loaves, too, draws on the model of neighbors helping neighbors.
Stand-alone independent food markets strengthen all sorts of community relationships and support local food economies.
From launching new websites and online services to partnering up with local delivery companies, from starting up click and collect services to creating new subscription services, and of course numerous measures to keep staff and customers safe, businesses at Wapping Wharf, and across Bristol, have certainly put in the hard graft.
Solikyl aims to create the latter, a food commons, where food is seen as a shared resource through social practice rather than as a private good.
People of color and low-income communities have long gathered ingredients for meals, and foraging can help fill in the gaps in places where historic redlining has had lasting effects on supermarket options. In fact, some wild and feral foods can provide greater nutritional benefits than produce bought in stores.
Whilst the coronavirus crisis has presented extreme challenges and hardship for residents and organisations in Leeds, Sonja Woodcock hopes that the experience has strengthened the cities’ movement for fairer, sustainable food.
Richenda Wilson of the East London community-led food enterprise Growing Communities (GC) describes how dealing with the rollercoaster of COVID-19 – aside from being ridiculously hard work – has inspired thoughts about the future of UK food and farming, about change, closeness and resilience.
As we look ahead to re-open the country post-COVID, we also have the chance to re-work our public relationship to our food system, and mend its broken aspects in a way that will better meet community needs and values in our “new normal” future.
