Bristol Food Links

Bristol Food Links is an umbrella organisation working to promote healthy, sustainable and affordable food across the City. Founded in the mid-90's, as part of Voscur, Bristol Food Links aims to bring together a variety of sectors to support community food initiatives in their work across the City.

Bristol Food Links ran out of funding in 2005, and since early 2007 a small Task Group has been meeting to re-establish the organisation. In January 2008 Bristol City Council’s Environment and Sustainability Unit provided some funding to develop an organisational plan and funding bid for a new and re-energised Bristol Food Links.

 

Events

Funding event for community food initiatives

Was held on Monday 10 March 2008, 9.30 – 3pm at The Southville Centre, Beauley Road, Southville, Bristol.

This event saw some 60 organisations from across Bristol come together to discuss how to work together to transform Bristol into a hub of healthy, sustainable and affordable food. A wide range of interests were represented, but an exciting and common goal shared by all was to make food in Bristol work for the benefit of both people and the planet.

Sustainable food across Bristol
Joy Carey, Soil Association’s Head of Local Food, gave a great introduction to the importance of local food in terms of both sustainability and the challenges faced by local communities around food’s role in their health, local environment and economy.

Mapping food work across the City
Exciting progress was made in mapping what work is already happening to promote healthy, sustainable, affordable food across Bristol. Not only did this allow everyone to celebrate the work already happening, but it importantly also identified various gaps across the City where we need to initiate new projects, learning from existing good practice.

Assessing projects’ support needs
Vast amounts of information was gathered on the problems community projects are facing in terms of their work around food. Bristol Food Links is now analysing this information to explore how best to respond to this and support projects to transform food in Bristol.

Developing joint funding bids
Crucial to transforming food across Bristol is a joined up approach, capitalising on the wealth of ideas and experience held by Bristol’s myriad community projects. The day saw an exciting range of ideas materialising around how projects can best work together. Subsequent meetings are already being planned to take these ideas forward.

Watch this space for more detailed feedback from the event and for information about how to get involved in the discussions about taking funding bids forward.

Contact Claire Milne on Claire.milne@bristol.gov.uk or 07824 878904 to:

- Find out more about Bristol Food Links and this event
- Let Bristol Food Links know about your food related work or your support needs around this.