Community organising: sowing seeds for a strong, diverse food movement

Be it growing, eating, sharing or socialising, the food sector is a growing bed of organisers. Organisations and individuals are bringing people together to tackle household food insecurity, build more sustainable food systems and grow and cook good food to connect communities. People, projects and organisations are delivering this work through community organising methods, but what is community organising, what are the tools and tactics being tried and tested in the food sector already and how we can use these to build strong, diverse food movements? Find out in this webinar where speakers included:

• Natasha Adams, Co-founder of Organising for Change
• Joshua Virasami, Just Fact Mobiliser, Women’s Environment Network
• Sarah Woolley, General Secretary, Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union
• Dale Cranshaw, Head of Food for Life Get Togethers, Soil Association

This webinar was organised as part of the Food Learning Forum, a peer-learning network made up of programme managers of Lottery-funded projects related to food. Funded by the National Lottery, the Forum aims to draw together expertise from both within the organisations and from external facilitators as appropriate and share this with the wider network. It is coordinated by Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming and has been running since October 2019. 

List of links/articles shared at the session

• Natasha Adams' slides
• Women's Environment Networks' Just FACT programme
• The Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union Right to Food campaign and report
• Local Trust research on community infrastructure
• Join the 'My Food Community', run by the Soil Association