Local Food Initiatives

We are supporting the development of new local food growing and marketing projects, such as Burnley Food Links, East London Food Access, and local Transition Towns groups. This work includes promoting partnership working with other local food providers and undertaking financial management. Our contributions to their activities include project definition, the setting up of book-keeping and financial systems, research into the state of local food provision and the development of evaluation frameworks.

Education

We are currently supporting the establishment of the Northern School of Permaculture which provides training in Permaculture Design. Recenty we have been working with Grow Gaia (Manchester) and other associates. Projects have included the Longford Park Community Engagement programme and Manley Park Primary School in Manchester. At Manley Park we designed and implemented an outdoor learning programme that integrates real-life learning, memorable outdoor experiences and pupil-centred grounds development, using the permaculture approach. The programme demonstrates the importance of nature and raises issues such as sustainable food production, in parallel to meeting the specific requirements of the National Curriculum and supporting teaching staff to gain the skills and confidence to lead outdoor learning in the future. We have also provided consulatncy to Manchester College (Brownlea Road campus) for the use of their outdoor facilites for vocational training.

Capacity Building and Community Enterprise Workshops

With the Northern School of Permaculture's bioregional project we have run a conference on creating sustainable futures in Manchester in 2015. We have run a series of workshops on open source methods and open data at various locations in Lancashire.. More on Capacity Building