Funders:
Cardiff Council Direct Food Support Grant Project 2023/2024, The National Lottery Community Fund.
Project Aims
Our project ‘Seeds of Hope’ aimed to help vulnerable people in Cardiff who are experiencing, or who are at risk of, food poverty. Based at the Leckwith Droves allotment in Cardiff, and working in partnership with referred service users and volunteers from vulnerable communities, we aimed to provide them with volunteering opportunities, with a more long term intention of growing and distributing fresh food.
Outcomes intended for our participants included: connecting vulnerable people to nature and wellbeing, growing food, learning cookery skills, increasing awareness of healthy eating, low cost cooking, sharing cookery skills and food stories, and bringing people together through the creative, growing and cooking processes.
The funding was also to purchase a poly tunnel to enable us to produce more fresh food all year round, working in collaboration with local partners for food distribution to the most vulnerable communities.
What we did
We facilitated a series of community sessions at the Leckwith Droves allotment in Cardiff working with a wide mix of people and exploring and sharing food memories, favourite foods, experiences of cooking food and growing skills, and we have been cooking leek and potato soup, soda bread and other food together. In the project we have enjoyed this community connection and eating the food together and sharing our ideas and listening to each other.
Many people in the groups have not been very confident to cook or grow food before and we have shared ideas for growing and cooking food at the allotments and in our own homes, sharing recipes that can be made easily and cheaply. Some of the group members had great ideas for things to grow and cook, and thought they would love to be involved more in this into the future, as well as sharing skills with other people and more vulnerable communities including refugees and people experiencing poverty, mental and physical ill health and isolation.
We have purchased/ installing our new poly tunnel at the allotment site with the capital funding, which will be invaluable in terms of enabling us to offer an all year round growing programme and sheltered space to learn and grow in with more vulnerable people and community groups to increase the engagement of our project.
Benefits
Our participants have told us that they have really enjoyed the sense of community in the project, as well as sharing stories about food and eating together which has for some been a highlight of their week.
There is a great feeling of possibility about being able to cook nutritional food and that it could be possible, even on a tight budget, and with more support like this to build confidence. We gave out hand-drawn recipes which everyone took home; all the recipes are simple and use mug measurements. The participants in the project started to bring in their own and favourite recipes and had lots of ideas for future cooking sessions. All involved told us that they enjoyed eating together and it felt very sociable- and provides a great sense of of community.
Feedback included:
“Eating together is really sociable”
“Great atmosphere!”
“ We can share ideas about what we grow here, for cooking and preserving the produce together …”
“Being here is really relaxing”
“I’d love to come here more and grow my own food…”
Sustainability
Co-production and communities:
We wanted to encourage more vulnerable and diverse groups of people to visit the allotment and work with us with their partners and support organisations to build our project into the future.
We have successfully linked with and developed our relationships through this project with: Edible Cardiff; Boomerang Cardiff; FareShare Cymru; South Riverside Community Development Centre; Cardiff and the Vale Ukrainian support team; The Vale of Glamorgan Mental Health Team; Ty Canna Mental Health Outreach Services; Cardiff and Vale Action for Mental Health; South Wales Probation Services; NuLife; mirus. These partners and their service users and clients will all help us develop the project, building it though co-production and making it more sustainable into the future.
We have used this funding to sow the seeds to help us to grow this supportive community – our green/food/wellbeing network.
Participants:
Group members have been swapping their knowledge and advice – and planning together what produce to plant and harvest in the allotments together, as well as swapping cooking recipes and tips. We have also connected with the local gardening community who are based at the allotments; these gardeners have so much knowledge about the produce that they grow and they have been happy to get involved with our new participants to pass on they knowledge and share it with people that have never been confident or involved with growing and cooking their own food.
Future ideas include creating a noticeboard that people can use to swap recipes and ideas, as well as giving jobs to do each week for volunteers coming to the allotments.
In the summer we will make salads and preserve some of the fruit and veg as well as harvesting, cooking and eating it together.
We also look forward to participants returning and new contacts made bringing new people together to grow the project further.
Project Photo Gallery
