Key Issue 2

Campaigns

Cambridge Sustainable Food has developed an excellent track record of leading public facing campaigns and frequently involves other organisations through steering groups, event organisation and publicity. Examples include:

Sugar Smart: Launched in partnership with Cambridge United Charitable Trust with 3000+ people in attendance. A campaign with with Cambridge University Hospital with videos, quizzes and a stall. 10 young people got involved and made a video for the campaign and in total 22 people took up a Sugar Smart challenge.

Waste Less Save More: This Waste Less Save More campaign was carried out over 5 different projects, to raise awareness of reducing food waste. During the Cambridge Pumpkin Fest 2018, 17 events were held over 10 days with over 3000 people participating. A zero waste kitchen challenge was ran involving 8 cookery workshops with 20 households completing the challenge. In addition a Feed the 1000 event using surplus food was held alongside Food Saver Champions stalls held at events and fairs.

Veg Cities: A week long Cambridge Veg Fest 2019 was ran involving 41 partners to deliver 16 events, 7 stalls, 4 cookery demos, 3388 people participate. Cambridge had 10 Big Dig participating groups, and diverse cuisines were represented at Veg Fest town meal. Local restaurant group Cambs Cuisine promoted the ‘Kids Veg Out’ campaign. Field to fork to face! event was run with special veg dishes and menus from eight local food businesses, totalling over 1,963 covers.

Additional campaigns: Food for our Future - Food Waste Challenge, Love Food Hate Waste, Grow a Row, WWII rationing challenge.

Food growing

Cambridge has a thriving community growing culture in the city. Some examples include:

• Cambridge University Botanic Garden runs Community Growing Group (12 community gardens)

• Transition Cambridge runs food growing projects, Facebook and has a newsletter. 

• CoFarm, Cambridge city's new community farm, encourages local volunteers to co-create the farm under expert guidance.

Community network

Cambridge has a strong network of food activists and Cambridge Sustainable Food seeks to promote ideas and opportunities for collaboration with individuals and the voluntary sector. We are currently working with the nine new Community Food Hubs to move beyond emergency food response to become ward-based centres for sustainable food. We are working with the City Council to build a community kitchen and permanent redistribution centre which will act as a focus for community action. Some examples include:

• Cambridge Sustainable Food runs a volunteer management system for nine Community Food Hubs and hosts a volunteers’ Facebook group . March 2020-21 recorded 337 volunteers, volunteering over 18,350 hours 

• Partnership members have links to and are members of other network groups e.g. Cambridge Doughnut Economics, Transition Cambridge, Cambridge Carbon Footprint and the City Council Climate Change Forum

• Cambridge Sustainable Food’s Building Community Food Knowledge, Skills, Resources and Projects web pages provide advice and signposting to local groups 

• Cambridge Sustainable Food website hosts the Community Food Map

• Cambridge also supports voluntary groups and individuals to repurpose surplus food e.g. FoodCycle, Community Fridges 

• Cambridge Sustainable Food initiated “Grow A Row” during lockdown, encouraging allotments/streets to grow extra to donate to Emergency Food Response, with 15+ people/organisations/allotments already involved.

Community growing

Cambridge has strong communal food growing traditions, fostered by Transition Cambridge, which initiated many still-active projects. The lead is now Cambridge Community Growing Group, with 12 core members (including Cropshare, Growing Spaces, Empty Common Community Garden) and another 7 on its community garden map. It runs events, free training sessions, identifies funding opportunities, encourages volunteering, promoting members’ activities through social media. Transition Cambridge website includes “what can I do?”, such as where to source seeds/compost. Transition runs free “Grow Your Own” sessions at Trumpington Allotments. Seedy Sunday is Cambridge’s major annual event for food-growing activists, attracting hundreds of visitors. 

CoFarm, Cambridge’s first community farm (seven acres, started growing in 2020), runs volunteer training days, working with local volunteers for its two-acre organic market garden. 

The City Council directly manages 120 existing allotments at eight sites, and there are a further fourteen sites managed by allotment societies. Two more sites in new areas are being developed, meaning there are five more sites than two years ago. Clay Farm Community Shed has received planning permission for a greenhouse/tool library.  The Council also supports growing spaces and take-up of new allotments and community gardens in new housing developments to encourage residents to grow their own food e.g. recently granted meanwhile lease has led to the creation of “Joy’s Garden” in Queen Edith’s. There is an allotment network for Cambridge/surrounding villages.  All new urban extensions have good food growing provision. Greater Cambridge Shared Planning’s Sustainable Design and Construction SPD includes food growing. 

City Council supports sustainable food projects through Community Development grants, Sustainable City grants, where criteria include “increase access to sustainably produced food for residents”, and smaller Area Committee Grants. It is also allowing Cambridge Sustainable Food to use a community centre as a temporary surplus food redistribution hub rent-free while it looks for a more permanent site.