For London food growers: Urban Food Growers Networking Day

[Mark]

URBAN FOOD GROWERS - NETWORKING DAY

Thursday, October 25th 2007         9:30am – 3:45 pm

Forest Farm Peace Garden, Hainault, East London

More groups and organisations are recognising the importance of growing
food in the city. The Urban Food Growers Network is a new initiative that
aims to better link community food growers in London. It has developed
from several informal meetings involving members of six community
food-growing projects in North/East London. By creating opportunities to
connect more, it is hoped that we can work together to plug gaps in our
knowledge, learning and resources, and find solutions that will enable us
to produce more locally grown, healthy food.

We would like to invite you to come along on Thursday 25 October when we
will be hosting a Networking Day. The event will be held at Forest Farm
Community Gardens, end of Hazelbrouck Gardens, Ilford, IG6 2XL.

We hope that you, or someone from your group will come along with ideas and
information about your work. The morning will focus on learning more about
each other’s work and discuss opportunities and challenges. Workshops will
enable us to share learning on common themes as they emerge. We will
finish by discussing the network and how acting together could make us
more effective in our food growing work. In keeping with the work we do
we’re planning practical skill sharing with on-site workshops about
bee-keeping and fruit-tree pruning.

Common themes that have already emerged include:

Access to land and land vulnerability
Need to seek practical ways of sharing resources
Distributing surplus produce: Ways and means
Fundraising and income generation
Paid workers and volunteers
Working in communities to encourage more food growing
Forest gardens and other cultivation methods
Integrating permaculture designs into projects

Drinks will be provided, but you are invited to bring lunch to share.

If you have questions, comments or contributions, please get in touch.
Even if you can’t make it on the 25 October, we’re interested to hear
about your work and how you might contribute to such a network and use it
to support your activities. (We are hoping that a good collection of food
growing groups from North/East London can make it!) A proposed timetable
for the day will be sent out closer to the day.

Who’s been involved so far? We come from a variety of food growing groups,
working in communities, which include Organiclea Community Growers, Growing
Communities, Hackney Community Tree Nursery and Edible Forest Garden,
Naturewise, Plot 21 and Forest Farm Peace Garden. We are passionate about
the benefits of growing food in cities and recently came together via a
Food Hub at The Hornbeam Centre in Walthamstow where we discussed the need
for a more formal network of food-growing groups such as our own.

We look forward to speaking to you soon.

Jacklyn (Hackney Community Tree Nursery and Forest Garden) and Clare
(OrganicLea)