Real Bread Campaign project plans

To compliment the Real Bread Campaign’s work lobbying the Government for improved standards; championing Real Bread and people who make it; and challenging big business to do better, we’re looking for funding to run one or more projects.

The following are brief outlines, which we want to develop and deliver in partnership with people who’ll benefit from them, as well as with businesses and other organisations in and beyond the Real Bread Campaign's (and Sustain's wider) network.

Lessons In Loaf: A modular project, centred on bakers and bakery teachers passing on the valuable life lesson of Real Bread making to children in local schools. Potential add-ons include train-the-trainer workshops for teachers to embed the necessary knowledge, skills and confidence a school; seed-to-sandwich, grow-a-loaf STEM projects; and using bread as a topic across a range of curriculum subjects.

Real Bread For All: This project has two main strands: supporting small bakeries in establishing schemes that make Real Bread available at prices realistically affordable to local people on the tightest budgets; and a programme of low-cost / free-to-user workshops to share bread making knowledge and skills in community settings.

Real Bread on the Menu: guidance and training for cooks and caters to make Real Bread available on more school – and other public sector – menus. This could be run as a stand-alone project, or as part of either of the two outlined above.

A Whole Lotta Loaf: driving a virtuous circle of supply and demand for delicious, nutritious wholemeal and other wholegrain Real Bread. It will include sharing skills, knowledge and inspiration to encourage bakers to make more wholemeal products; a marketing campaign to drive demand; and lobbying for a legal definition of wholegrain.

Grassroots Grain UK: building the market for Real Bread and other products made from landrace, heritage and other non-commodity grains, grown in agroecological / low-input systems. It will involve facilitating a national peer-to-peer network of regional seed-to-sandwich grain groups; working with them to investigate and tackle obstacles they face; gathering knowledge and good practice they have developed to create guidance for wider circulation. It will also include a consumer-facing marketing campaign to increase awareness and demand.

How it works

Depending on the funding we’re able to secure (and / or income we’re able to generate by other means) a project is likely to run from one to three years. In any case, the stages would be roughly:

1. Bring together partners to decide on the aims, outcomes and outputs of the project, as well as who will be responsible for doing what; then start to design it, while looking for potential funders.
2. Identify a potential funder and write a tailored bid, which matches the aims and needs of project with the interests and needs of the funder. 
3. Secure funding, finalise the project plan and begin work on detailed design, based on existing examples of good practice.
4. Deliver the project, which might have a pilot phase and / or involve continuing development.
5. Monitoring and evaluation, with a view to securing funding (or making it self-funding) to roll it out more widely, or at least continue it.

Get involved

We’d like to hear from people who: 

• are involved in an organisation that makes grants to charities, which might consider an application from us.
• might be interested in working with us to develop and deliver one or more of the above – whether as someone who’d benefit from the project, or on behalf of a business or other organisation.
• have deep pockets and could chip in a wodge to reduce (or even remove) our dependence on finding that elusive grant – well, if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

Why not just run a volunteer-powered project?

We’ve had a lot of success with work that relies on finding lovely people who volunteer their time, knowledge and skills. We will continue to do this, but to have a greater positive impact we want to be able to pay at least some people.

This is not least to recognise the value of their contributions, but also to ensure we can involve people who can’t afford to give up their time for nothing.