| Community allotment |
|
Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project allotment About the garden
Background: BUCFP is a registered charity run by the unemployed for the unemployed. The centre runs a variety of excellent services to support people across Brighton & Hove including welfare and benefits advice, temporary housing support, courses and classes, a crèche, volunteering opportunities, a daily affordable vegan lunch and much more. Visit their website for more info. The allotment has been going for a few years now, and though it has really taken off in the last year it had suffered a few setbacks as well as a general lack of horticultural expertise among the workers. The plot had become overgrown and they were in danger of losing some of their land if there wasn’t an improvement. The Food Partnership was able to support the project by teaming them up with John, an experienced grower from the Whitehawk Community Food Project through the Harvest mentoring programme. This funded six hours of John’s time to work with and advise the BUCFP allotment. Seeing the skills he had to offer motivated Emily and Helen to seek funding to keep him coming back on a regular basis. His knowledge and expertise has been instrumental in helping the project grow and develop – having him on hand to work with the volunteers and share his skills has really helped them to make the most of all their hard work. The plot has changed a lot over the past year and has become significantly more productive. There is now a regular workday and someone is guaranteed to be on the plot to welcome and work with anyone who comes to help out. They were successful in obtaining funding from the European Social Fund (ESF) to run regular training and mentoring sessions with John.
Who started the allotment project and why? The Centre’s Participation Worker applied for the allotment a few years ago in response to suggestions from some of the centre’s users. Food plays a big role in the centre’s activities - they serve a vegan lunch every day - and an allotment seemed a natural progression.
What have been your main successes? The main success is seeing how much land has been cleared and cultivated over the past year, as well as seeing the pleasure that people get out of it (being outdoors, learning, experiencing the wildlife).
Is there anything that Harvest can do / has done to help you? The mentoring introduced us to John, which has made an enormous difference. I really think Harvest should try to give bigger grants for this is future, so that fledgling community growing sites get the expert support they need – it can avoid many months of wasted effort if someone on your team has proper horticultural experience. All pictures credited with thanks to Edward Bishop, http://www.edwardbishop.me |
The Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project (BUCFP) has a community allotment spread over three plots at the Walpole Road allotment site on Whitehawk Hill. The plot is managed by Emily and Helen, BUCFP food project workers. There are work days at the allotment each Monday afternoon which are open to anyone who uses the centre. The workdays involve general plot maintenance and seasonal gardening tasks, and sometimes they are themed around specific tasks or topics which are of a training nature (e.g. introduction to organic gardening). Though there is only one weekly workday open to the public, once participants have been coming to the allotment for a while and know the ropes they can go up to the plot between sessions.
Who maintains the garden? Do you work with volunteers? Who, how many? The allotment is managed by the centre’s food project workers, Emily and Helen, who recruit volunteers for the allotment and attend the weekly workday. People who use the Centre are welcome to come up to the plot during the workdays every Monday afternoon and the regular allotment volunteers can come up when they like. Numbers at workdays can fluctuate a bit with the weather: in the colder wetter months there are usually between two and five people at workdays, but in the warmer months there are likely to be between five and fifteen at workday sessions.
What is your favourite thing to grow? Malcolm, one of the regular volunteers at the centre and on the allotment, likes growing things he likes to eat such as strawberries and cherry tomatoes because they’re healthy and so tasty. He says ‘you've gotta go a long way to beat eating a strawberry off of the allotment on a sunny day.'
people up to the garden who have been reluctant to do so because they aren’t interested in gardening. An allotment project can offer much more than learning how to grow fruit and veg. There are the health benefits of being outdoors and doing some hands-on work, as well as the social benefits and opportunities to learn new skills such as woodworking, path laying, repairing and mending. 
