History of Food Plymouth
Food Plymouth’s multi-sector Partnership was formed in 2010, enabled by a direct support package from the Soil Association, with local match funding from Plymouth organisations. Since its fruition, Food Plymouth has developed and delivered the Plymouth Food Charter and Action Plan which ran between 2011-2014. During this time, European links were established, including collaborative work on the EU Inter-reg and deal programmes. Food Plymouth inputted expert evidence into the Plymouth Fairness Commission during 2013 (see Fairness Commission report 2014 and co-authored the Future of Food in Plymouth 2014-2031 strategic planning paper.
Other historical significant outputs include:
The Big Food Event (BFE) 2014 | The Fish2Fork Award (2014)
Plus, working towards Sustainable Fish City status 2014… all of which earned Plymouth its bronze SFC award.
We are now working towards our Silver SFC award which is the focus of the work we are currently doing.
Benefits and Reach
Our multi-sector partners enjoy a range of benefits from their continued support of Food Plymouth, including: Being part of the 50+ strong Sustainable Food Cities (SFC) movement; participating in Food Plymouth’s quarterly Partnership Network meetings; engaging in a range of food activities/events; being part of a dynamic and coordinated network helping to move Plymouth towards food system transformation; and receiving (and contributing to) our regular news bulletins. Our news bulletins are distributed directly to the active members on the database and through this website and social media channels outlined below, thereby aiding communication, transparency and accountability.
Food Plymouth has around 120 active members and partners within a wider database of 1,000 + contacts, 1,024 Facebook followers (join us) and 3,124 followers on Twitter (follow us).
Trajectory
Food Plymouth is working towards Sustainable Food Cities (SFC) Silver standard, aiming to achieve this by the early 2020s. Having successfully achieved bronze status we are now actively pursuing the six SFC strands in our Bronze to Silver action plan, so that we can build on our strengths and move up to the next level. To enable this progress, we have teamed up this year (2018) with the local authority public health team to support the Thrive Plymouth inequalities programme. The year five focus is on ‘people connecting through food’, for which Food Plymouth’s action plan is being adopted, with one project for each theme being showcased through the Thrive Plymouth year five focus
The future for Food Plymouth is exciting and packed with opportunities. We would like to say huge thanks to the faithful core team, supporters and partners who have worked tirelessly (mainly in a voluntary capacity) brought Food Plymouth through to this breakthrough position; and a warm welcome to newer faces who are consolidating and adding to this living legacy.
If you wish to contribute to this growing movement in any way, please contact the Food Plymouth core team.