Good food movement
Food is a social glue. A shared meal breaks down barriers, everyone is equal around a dinner table.
Food builds bridges and starts conversations, tells stories about who we are, what we care about, and where we come from.
We want Gateshead to be a place where everyone has the knowledge, confidence, and motivation to buy, cook and enjoy food and to shape their local food environments.
Partner project examples
Comfrey Project
The Comfrey Project is a place where refugees and people who are seeking asylum can come to learn new skills, share what they know with others, and start to build a better life.
In a beautiful community space, and garden, they work together to grow crops and use nature-based activities to improve people’s wellbeing.
With year-round activities and emotional support for people of all ages, Comfrey’s volunteer community is mutually supportive, you can’t help but feel uplifted and learn something new when you visit.
Comfrey Project’s Healthy Cooking on a Budget activities have been running the past two years. A quote from one of the participants:
“Sometimes the things I get from the food bank just sit in my cupboard. Now I am going to find a way to use them up in soups, so they don’t go to waste… [through things I’ve learnt] I think I will save so much money.”
Comfrey’s new Cooking Champions scheme will build on this, providing teaching on nutrition, budget-friendly/saving food choices and practices, environmentally sound food choices, sourcing good food in the UK and locally (from food banks, lunch clubs, food shopping, familiarising with local produce, growing your own food).
As part of this project they will create materials to be translated in different languages, with the aim to support people, predominantly those from culturally diverse backgrounds and mostly migrants, to gain knowledge, skills and confidence to source, prepare and enjoy food which is nutritious, better for their budget and the environment.
Brighten The Day
Brighten the Day, the Holiday Activities with Food programme in Gateshead, sees projects across Gateshead providing fun activities to keep children and young people busy and active over the school holidays, including providing healthy meals for those who usually get free school meals.
In 2023 the BrightenTheDay team created several pop-up cooking kits, to be able to create mini cooking schools in community buildings to facilitate hands-on food workshops and classes for Free School Meal qualified children in the holidays.
With safe knives and peelers, induction hobs, wipe-clean aprons, and brightly coloured spatulas and spoons, the kits are designed with children in mind and have seen over 130 children aged from 5 to 16 cooking their own hot lunches every school holiday.
The pop-up kitchen kit is designed to allow 16 children to cook in one session, working in pairs, and there are five pop-up kitchen kits. They are needed during the school holidays but are available to careful community-based borrowers during term time, along with suggested recipes and workshop plans. Get in touch if you would like to borrow the kits during term time for your organisation.
Out North East: Recipe Cards project
Out North East reached out to Gateshead Citizen’s Advice and Gateshead Foodbanks who have LGBTQ+ groups and service users, and found that there is a big push to address the stigma of foodbanks and the perception of food handouts, by giving people the social experience of shopping and the freedom of choice to select your preferences.
With this in mind, Out North East worked with Gateshead College and produced recipe cards showing people how they can cook three nutritional meals, under a tenner, for a family of four. They then teamed up with Aldi to supply £10 gift cards as part of our project for people to experiment with our recipe cards.
The project was also delivered alongside partners GCA, counselling services and foodbanks for distribution to the LGBTQ+ community. The feedback has been extremely positive particularly bringing partners together to work in a different way.
If would like a copy of these recipe cards to share with their community, please get in touch.