With partners across the borough, we take a look at the response by the Council and other local community organisations to the current crisis of food provision.
Useful Links
The recording can be found here
Sign up TODAY to help identify food growing spaces in borough
As outlined by Kate Hogarth – here is the link to Lambeth’s Food Poverty and Insecurity Action Plan
Link to Lambeth Larder’s digital map as demonstrated by Virginia Nimarkoh
Joana Ferro’s presentation can be found here
Sadly, Pam Warhurst was not able to be with us.
Questions from the participants:
Do you have any guidelines for what is considered ‘food growing land’ e.g. size in square meters? We would say three square metres is worth developing for food growing.
Is it possible to show a tooltip when you hover a cursor over the icons on the map? Currently you only get more information if you click on an icon. Sadly this is not possible
Do you have any criteria for roofs? If roofs are accessible and safe, then planters can be used here
Do you think that the influence of growing spaces within lambeth has changed people’s dietary choices or engendered any green values? We think that attitudes are changing, with the recognition that locally sourced, organic fruit and veg holds much greater nutritional value than anything that has been picked, stored in cold storage and shipped from across the world
Who do you expect to be the growers and lead the project in so many areas across a ward? We hope that more and more people will engage in food growing, as they see others doing so – it is catching! We hope that communities will form food growing groups (we know there are at least 200 such groups in the borough already)
Is there a page/guideline of recommended plants that will do well in Lambeth – season/type of soil? This is something we could start to compile – it’s a great idea
Is there a movement within the allotment world to make allotments a bit smaller so that more people could have them? This is a great idea. The allotment world is a bit of a closed shop to us! At present, we are not really engaging with allotment holders – we would love to!
Does the app include any AI to determine still viability? Arup had considered embedding AI/ Machine learning using satellite imagery developed inhouse by Arup but we chose to avoid IP agreement complexities but aim of creating a methodology that could be easily adopted, replicated and scaled across other boroughs.
Is there any link with farmers/etc to help with ‘how to grow education’?We are really interested in creating a directory of urban farmers and to develop internships and horticultural training for young people. We know that Myatt’s Fields Park are working on this too
Is there a link for people who want to grow food? This will be where IEL will help link people and place
Will the mapping be used so Lambeth Council provides a new designated Open Space for Food Growing, which is protected from development. as housing is all brownfield, so the land to grow food is not protected. A great question and something we hope we will be able to discuss with the Council once we have the evidence of available space that this map will create.
How creative can people be – could we identify eg flats with balconies where people could grow? We are working to identify space in the public realm this time around – we know that there are other groups looking to identify private spaces
Did I understand correctly that the mapping will carry on just till the end of this March? This is a short sharp project, but the public will be able to verify sites until the end of May
It would be good to know what happened to the WeGrowFor project Yes, this was set up to look at identifying unused private spaces and we were working quite closely with them around a year ago but everything has gone a little cold! But AllotMe has a similar business model which identifies places to grow food.
Two other questions were asked outside the event, which we are posing to the Council – they are:
The question is in two parts around open space land designation and equality of access.
a. What land use processes will the council ensure this mapping will contribute to for long term protection of new land for food growing?
b. Will an equality impact assessment of open space, as Croydon Council has commissioned, be undertaken to understand who has access and use to open spaces?
Dr Bridget Snaith is part of the commission , who completed an EIA on Queen Elizabeth Park, the former Olympic Park. Presentation from Festival of Place 2020 : Green space or white space? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EkdtBNpZf4I
Comments:
Virginia, the Lambeth larder map is fantastic, thanks for sharing.
Fantastic work Virginia
Excellent resource Virginia! Incredible work!
Norwood Forum considering the ACV route
Cuba has a great model to look at too.
In Buckinghamshire we run Grow to Give supporting allotment tenants to donate spare produce to the local food banks
We just started a project ‘Grow Lewisham’ we would love to be able to map growing spaces in Lewisham.
Brilliant session – thank you!
So interesting and inspiring.