PRESS RELEASE

Date: 5^th October 2011

The Brighton & Hove Food Partnership has been awarded funding by the Ernest Cook Trust for a new ‘Harvest Schools’ project. The project aims to improve food growing projects at primary schools in Brighton & Hove by offering:

• termly workshops
• networking opportunities
• in-depth, practical support from experienced gardeners
• subsidised materials and equipment for projects

This support will focus on making the growing projects more sustainable for the future, through proven methods such as teaching perennial planting, seed saving and drought-resistant planting.

Since 2009, the Food Partnership has worked in-depth with three primary schools in East Brighton (in some of the most deprived wards in the country) to help them set up and manage successful school growing projects. Most recently, we held a pilot meeting of the Harvest Schools project in June 2011 which was attended by 12 representatives of different school garden projects.

We hope that the school gardens that have participated will have gardens which require less maintenance, staff with increased gardening skills and wider buy-in across the school due to improved links between the gardens and the curriculum. This should ensure that successive years of primary students around the city can use the gardens to learn about relevant elements of the curriculum and increase their connection to the environment.

The Food Partnership is holding the first meeting for the ‘Harvest schools’ project at Goldstone Primary school on Tuesday 18 October 4-5.30pm. This meeting will give everyone a chance to reflect on how their school gardens fared over the summer, and share tips about how to make sure school gardens survive those summer months when watering regimes may crumble a bit! We’ll also get to hear more about the garden at Goldstone Primary, which gets lots of support from parents. Future meetings will revolve around different school gardens and will be themed to cover different topics identified by the group.

“Gardening can bring so many benefits to children, not only in learning about where vegetables come from, but it can also help to build confidence in children who may not do as well in the classroom and bring about a great sense of pride in nurturing a plant from seed to plate. We’re really excited about the Harvest Schools project and the prospect of working with more schools to develop their gardens” said Ann Baldridge, Development Officer for the Harvest project at the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership.

Ends

For more information or to sign-up for the next meeting contact:

1. Jess Crocker, Harvest Manager, or Ann Baldridge, Development Officer, Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, Tel: 01237 431 700

Notes for Editors:

1. Harvest Brighton and Hove is Big Lottery-funded project led by the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, which aims to increase the amount of food grown and consumed in the city. Partners in the project include: Food Matters, the University of Brighton, The Brighton and Hove Allotment Federation, the Brighton Permaculture Association, Moulsecoomb Forest Garden and the Whitehawk Community Food Project. It is supported by Brighton and Hove City Council, and Brighton and Hove Teaching Primary Care Trust. www.harvest-bh.org.uk

 

2. Brighton & Hove Food Partnership is a not for profit organisation that works for better food for the city now and in the future. By better food, we mean food that is healthy, affordable, accessible and produced within environmental limits. We believe by working in partnership Brighton & Hove can achieve a sustainable food system. Details of our work are at: www.bhfood.org.uk.

 

3. Ernest Cook Trust is one of the UK's leading educational charities. Rooted in the conservation and management of the countryside, the Trust actively encourages children and young people to learn from the land through hands-on educational opportunities on its estates and by offering grants. http://www.ernestcooktrust.org.uk/