The Plymouth Food Equality Project ran between 2019 and 2021, talking to people and communities about food

We ran participatory workshops across Plymouth to find out about local and individual experiences of food in Plymouth, so that relevant solutions could be found.

Sitting within Food Plymouth’s Healthy Food for All and Good Food Movement Sustainable Food Places action areas, The Plymouth Food Equality Project sought to ensure diverse voices and experiences were included in future and strategic planning for food in Plymouth.

Participatory Workshops and Creative Approaches

Between 2019 and 2021, the Plymouth Food Equality Project ran creative and interactive workshops for various groups across Plymouth, in Stonehouse, Barne Barton, North Prospect and Plymouth Youth Parliament. The project also collaborated with Fotonow CIC to deliver online creative and digital skills workshops to young people at Barnardos and LiveWest, culminating in the creation of an online zine. The zine brought to life the voices of young carers in the city, who came together on and offline to share and document their food experiences through photography, collage and discussion. It can be viewed here.

Throughout the lifetime of the project, we had conversations about the affordability of food, the quality of food, free school meals, emergency food provision, and more. Using creative approaches such as collage, zining, photography and audio recordings, we captured these conversations to share more widely.

Sharing our Creative Outputs

We have gathered together creative work made by participants at these workshops, which describe individual experiences of and perspectives on food.

PEP_zine01
PEP_zine02

During Covid 19 we shifted our creative model online and ran a series of collaborative collage workshops. These provided space for people to share their experiences of Covid and hopes for a better future for the food system.  These sessions were recorded and made into three audio visual pieces, available to view here:

Further activities

In May 2021, the Food Equality Project and Food is Fun CIC held a city wide People’s Assembly consultation process to gather a wide range of perspectives and voices to help us plan for the future. You can find more about the findings of the People’s Assembly here.

Resources

With The Food Equality Project having now ended, we are pleased to share what we have learned through delivering creative workshops about food in local venues in Plymouth and online during the last two years.

The Creative Methods Toolkit  aims to equip anyone working with groups who may be exploring a complex topic, such as food, with a set of tools to have conversations and share their views. These resources are now on the Food Plymouth website and include downloadable pdfs outline different methods, suggested session plans and consent and evaluation forms.

We want to keep developing this toolkit, so, if you do use it, please get in touch via the feedback form on the webpage to tell us how you got on. If you have questions or want to know more please contact us:  lisa.foodplymouth@gmail.com.

Visit Food Talks – People’s Assembly
Food Equality Toolkit - Click for More...

“The Food Equality Project has been an exciting community focussed project, supported by a range of city-wide partners, that has used creative methods to engage people to share their food stories. Using such creative approaches (with food as a topic) can be a fun and engaging way for people to share their important lived experiences. This process is an important step towards working out community-led solutions to some of our pressing current food justice issues.”

Dr Clare Pettinger, University of Plymouth

Poverty in Plymouth Facts

  • 11500 children are living in poverty in Plymouth
  • Numbers of individuals and families accessing the local Food Bank are increasing
  • Around 19% (8,000) of children aged under 16 years old are living in low income families in Plymouth
  • Life expectancy is 8.0 years lower for men and 6.3 years lower for women in the most deprived areas of Plymouth than in the least deprived areas.
  • The roll out of Universal credit in Plymouth is predicted to affect approx 32000 people in relation to what they can afford to buy

Partners who are in Food Poverty Alliance:

We welcome new partners! – if you would like to get involved in our Food Poverty theme of work then please contact us