The UK is peppered with seed savers, connected in formal and informal networks across the country and the world. These are growers on farms and allotments, in school playgrounds and on balconies, who collect seed from their crops at the end of the growing season. These can be sown again the following year or distributed […]
Across the country there has been an outpouring of food responses to the COVID-19 crisis in the last few weeks. From innovative emergency food provision programmes to ensure vulnerable people are fed, to novel food distributions channels to support local businesses, community organisations, businesses, local authorities and citizens are stepping up. How can we ensure […]
In the midst of political shifts and uncertainty, there is a new wave of politics bubbling under the surface. This new story is redefining what meaningful citizen participation means for governments. We spoke to Jon Alexander, co-founder at the New Citizenship Project and Trustee of the Food Ethics Council, to find out more about this […]
With rising global crises and shrinking funding pots, local authorities have their work cut out to help and support their communities. Thankfully, there is a new narrative of the role of public sector emerging from these uncertain times. Rather than being the overstretched service provider and answer to all our problems, local authorities are increasingly […]
Earlier this month, a group of us had the opportunity to gather around the question “How can thinking of ourselves and others as food citizens, rather than consumers, help solve the challenges of our food systems?”. After a warm welcome from Dan Crossley from the Food Ethics Council, Jon Alexander, co-founder of the New Citizenship […]
Treating people as food citizens isn’t simply thinking about our customers or members differently. It is about how we interact with people within the food system, including our employees. If change starts from within, how can we support people within our organisations first? How do we nurture our immediate community and how do we empower […]
The “solution” I hear mentioned most often when it comes to solving the current climate crisis is ‘education’. Indeed, education is a first step to any meaningful action, but it cannot lead to action without a sense of agency – the belief that we can create change. On its own, education brings a sense of […]
As a teenager, and largely by chance, I became involved in various local youth projects that opened my eyes to a world of organisations, projects and advisory boards that engaged with many issues and ideas that interested me. This involved giving more than a few tokenistic speeches and meetings with ‘decision makers’. Overall this experience […]
How to spot our fellow food citizen leaders You believe in people. You want to do the right thing for society to thrive now and in the future, but you know that you can’t do it alone. A key step to building our food citizenship movement – and to getting anywhere in the ethical food […]
Good news: people already care. As citizens, we care about animals being treated humanely, about the wellbeing of the environment, about the livelihoods of those who grow and make our food. Don’t believe it? Before diving into the Food Citizenship movement, I didn’t either. And that’s because by only talking about the consumer, we are […]
Since starting work on the Food Citizenship movement, I have received countless enquiries to collaborate, to help grow the movement and to start the movement in a particular sector, city, or even country! There is a lot of appetite to get involved and great potential for this new shift in society to take hold. So […]
As food citizens, we believe in the power of people. We want to and can have a positive influence on the food system. We also know that we express more of our true selves as citizens than we do as consumers. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said: “Show people as one thing, only one thing, over […]
Happy New Year! ? (It’s still socially acceptable to say that mid-January, right?) 2019 was in for a great start with the much-anticipated Oxford Real Farming Conference! We were very fortunate to run a session on Food Citizenship, which if you attended – THANK YOU! The session was a great opportunity to share what Food […]
A new idea is taking hold across the UK food and farming sector: Food Citizenship. This idea tells us, and others, that we are not just consumers at the end of the food chain, but participants in the food system as a whole. It tells us that we have the power not just to choose, […]
