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.
Bensham Bites
Dingy Butterflies CIC is a community arts organisation that works with residents, communities and organisations in Gateshead to explore the key issues that affect them, support them to make a change, share knowledge and skills and give the opportunity to have their voices heard. Through working with artists, residents, community groups, academics, and experts they develop projects that bring people together to explore issues and themes.
Bensham Bites came out of the arts and citizen science project Bees of Bensham, which explored biodiversity and land use in Bensham & Saltwell, giving residents an opportunity to explore nature in their community.
Led by artist and beekeeper Barbara Keating, Bensham Bites was inspired by how pollinators find food and resources and what we can learn from them.
Starting off as a pilot project funded by the RHS, it aimed to see how local food and growing organisations and residents could work together. The initial group included Dingy Butterflies, Herb Hub, Comfrey Project, The Chev, Barbara Keating and a few food growing interested residents. We wanted to bring together various growing projects, both existing and new, into one network to explore community food growing, waste, rescue, preservation and redistribution.
After a public consultation attended by 30 people including residents and representatives of 17 organisations they received funding from Gateshead Food Partnership and NLCF Awards for All to continue the project until April 2027. They are looking to expand the network of organisations, support them in their work with local people on low income and suffering from food poverty through knowledge and skill sharing; explore the health and wellbeing benefits of growing and eating healthily; map the community food facilities in the area and grow and share food from different cultures and communities.
