There are many considerations through which to explore how thriving through food manifests in our places, and food is deeply entangled and interconnected with so many other aspects of our lives. Food is a perfect example of the co-benefits that can exist through the interdependencies of the dimensions within the doughnut, such as shared, healthy meals being a vessel through which community is created or culture is preserved and passed through many generations.
“Livingston Road Allotments, just behind Tweed Tower, would come alive in the summer months with Caribbean elders sharing their surplus crop of callaloo, pumpkins, peas and other produce amongst friends and family who needed these ingredients to recreate the taste of familiar food from back home in the Caribbean.”
**—Lisa Palmer, What if we sought inspiration from the soil?
<aside> ➕ Dr Lisa Palmer, Associate Professor and the Interim Director of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester, has contributed to our Reimagining Economic Possibilities series with a piece called What if we sought inspiration from the soil? sharing a personal story of growing up in the gardens of Birmingham’s Caribbean community, where community and connection was nurtured, which you can read here.
What if we sought inspiration from the soil?
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The scope of this dimension has such a breadth and variety of potential enquiry areas, such as affordability of fresh fruit and vegetables, poor nutritional value in highly processed foods, food safety, and how locally produced the food is, amongst more considerations. Initially, we seek to explore the way food insecurity manifests in our neighbourhood as an indication of how food is present for the people here. Within that, there is much room for deliberation and further surfacing of other indicators that may demonstrate some of the intricacies in this dimension, many of which would require significant shifts in data collection for an understanding of access to food that is framed within broader interconnections of social and ecological thriving.
“We collect surplus [food], we check it, we distribute food to people or to [other] animals, or to people who are cooking meals, and then we compost. And then we grow food."
—Ann Gallagher, Incredible Surplus
We are keen to reflect over time not only quantitive changes in access to food in our neighbourhood, but the ways in which our neighbourhood works together and continues to more deeply demonstrate what is an evident consideration of food as a collective need to be met as a community rather than individually, and how this is nurtured and must be invested in.
The effect that designing to distribute in a place through an array of people-powered approaches including community grow sites, organising to redirect waste through projects such as Incredible Surplus, those preparing and sharing meals, the role independent convenience stores like T.E. Convenience play in providing culturally relevant foods such as plantain, open kitchen access and access to shared resources through library of things models such as Ladywood Share Shack, and much more has on the broader thriving of the neighbourhood with food a key part of many of these stories is incredibly significant, and something we are keen to highlight even at this early stage of co-creating a much longer term data and ‣ together.
<aside> ➕ Discover examples of just some of the amazing projects that are demonstrating the green shoots for a safe and just space of food in our neighbourhood as part of in Chapter 07 | Those Moving Us Into The Doughnut.
Incredible Surplus, previously known as The Real Junk Food Project Birmingham, began in 2014 as a creative response to the surplus produce that would otherwise be thrown away by supermarkets, restaurants and hospitality industries across the West Midlands. They aim to empower and engage people in sharing, growing and making the most of the resources within the community.
EAT MAKE PLAY is a social enterprise bringing neighbours together through activities and events, and Slow Food Birmingham is the local branch of a global organisation that reconnects people to where their food comes from, in order to inspire an active interest in local food cultures, traditions and production.
Warm Earth is a community gardening project nurturing the wellbeing of people and soil in their neighbourhood. They invite neighbours to grow flowers and vegetables and model the regenerative economy by creating and selling compost recycled from the food waste of local schools.
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You can also explore how Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) introduce the Food dimension of the Local Social lens on slide 12 of the Doughnut Unrolled: Dimensions of the Four Lenses tool.