The Walworth Neighbourhood Food Model is a project that aims to build a better, more sustainable food system in our neighbourhood. It aims to encourage sharing and connecting over food and to identify underused skills and assets in our community, creating more opportunities for local people to play a role in the local food system and build community wealth in Walworth.
A major success this year was the Action Learning Group 2.0 which built on last year’s pilot to provide ten local food initiatives and enterprises the opportunity to come together to share and work through challenges. The generosity and support that group members provided for each other was a reminder of the strength of peer-to-peer learning. The Action Learning format created practical next steps that group members could commit to and be accountable to the group for following through. In most cases this resulted in group members feeling more able to tackle the challenges they encountered in their front-line food work in communities.
In 2023/24 we also developed ‘First Hand’ food tours around Walworth, in collaboration with Forth CIC. These walks aimed to build climate action skills by visiting a range of food manufacturing sites, observing which skills are in use in neighbourhood food initiatives, and how they might be put to use in the service of a just climate transition.
A partnership with the Open University made use of Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods to support ‘community-led policy innovation’. This led to additional input from local groups into policy making, including Southwark’s 2030 agenda, the Southwark Land Commission, and a review of the work of Southwark’s Community Gardening Coordinators.
As active members of the Southwark Food Action Alliance steering group we contributed insights from the Neighbourhood Food Model to help shape Southwark’s new Sustainable Food Strategy and Action Plan. We also built on a partnership with London College of Communication, working with students from the UX (User Experience) MA who produced cookbooks and neighbourhood food maps.
In the coming year we’re keen to demonstrate how our rich local networks of food growers, suppliers, cooks and food activists can bring sustained long-term benefits for the neighbourhood. Our newly recruited Project Officer for the Neighbourhood Food Model, will be organising food sharing events to bring people together around healthy sustainable food, and recruiting local residents to work on a food mapping project, in partnership with London College of Communications.
We plan to build on the success of previous years, by running Action Learning Group 3.0 with a specific focus this year on the challenges of food growing. This will be part of building stronger working partnerships with the Southwark Community Gardening Coordinators and Walworth Community Gardening Network.
To learn more about the Walworth Neighbourhood Food Model and its projects visit their page here.