We believe that food is a leveller, after all ‘if you eat, you’re in’, so using food is a great way to connect across communities.
Sometimes our communities can become siloed and fractured, but we believe that by being Incredible we can bring people together who wouldn’t usually be connected – and the power of this can be life changing.
By growing food in a public place you are opening up conversations which otherwise wouldn’t happen. David from Incredible Edible Prestwich and District used the cultivation of a piece of land behind his house as a way to start conversations with his neighbours and has seen children from neighbouring houses playing in the street together because they started talking about the food – read more here.
And for a homelessness charity in Rochdale, thinking carefully about food culture brought groups of people together to share food growing and eating, reducing perceived barriers and building community – read more here.
As an Incredible Edible group you have the power to bring people together who usually wouldn’t connect, and this might need some clever thinking and planning. If you’ve tried inviting people to get involved but they don’t come, have a think about what the perceived or real barriers might be – it could be the location of your site or the feeling that ‘growing isn’t for me’. Think about how you could change your activities to make them more appealing. And if you’re not sure, go back to our tried and tested method – have a cuppa. Find someone to talk to who is from the community you want to work with and listen – work out what’s important around food (there will definitely be something) and then think about how you can build that into your activities. And keep the dialogue going – you’ll be learning from each other which can only improve your Incredible activities!
