NFS Virtual Summer Symposium 2020. Webinar 1 - On the Ground: Food Justice Magic.
Over the past few months, millions of emergency meals have been cooked across the country through grassroots organisation, built from within the communities that they aim to support. Although these systems were built quickly, they have been incredibly effective at supporting the most vulnerable when government aid has fallen short. We must learn from these systems as the structures formed are important foundations for a future National Food Service. In this webinar, we speak to three organisations across the UK who have collectively provided hundreds of thousands of meals in the past few months. We hope to learn from their insights and experiences so that together we can build a #nationalfoodservice.
Our speakers:
Sukh Dillon, from GMG Gurdwara Guru Maneyo Granth Gurdwara (GMGG)
Sunny Karagozlu, founder of Edible London
Adam Roberts, CEO of Open Kitchens UK
NFS Virtual Summer Symposium 2020. Webinar 2: Organising In, With & For your Community
At the start of the pandemic, we had 7 branches operating a variety of community-led food projects. Now, five months in, the National Food Service network is coming into its own. We have come together quickly to share resources and support across the NFS network. Existing branches have launched effective emergency food responses, and replicated these systems of support elsewhere. Brand new branches have been set up in a matter of weeks. Communities in 11 cities across the country have mobilised to ensure universal access to food in the face of an unfolding hunger crisis. In this webinar, we hear from the directors of three NFS branches around the country, all who are at different levels of establishment to learn how anyone can set up a NFS branch, as well as the peaks and challenges associated with this.
Speakers:
Bethany Martin, National Food Service London
Lauren Saunders, Wildthing Cafe, Cardiff
Carys Kettlety, Bristol National Food Service
NFS Virtual Summer Symposium 2020. Webinar 3: Why do we Need a National Food Service? (Academic Perspective)
The National Food Service has benefited hugely from the involvement of the academic community in the past few months- it takes a lot of thinking to build an entire new public system able to tackle some of society’s biggest issues which is not dependent on current consumption practices. In this webinar we hear from three prestigious academics across the country who have greatly supported the NFS in the past few years to hear about why their research proves how we desperately need a #nationalfoodservice.
Speakers:
Dr Megan Blake, University of Sheffield
Dr Sharon Noonan-Gunning. City University London
Marsha Smith, Nottingham Trent University
NFS Virtual Summer Symposium 2020. Webinar 4 - The National Food Service in Context, Our Food Futures.
As a new grassroots public service, it is important that the National Food Service responds adequately to the differing needs of communities across the country and works with and learns from existing national organisations in order to be as effective as possible. In this webinar we will hear from two NFS members who discuss the wider context of the food system, political context and critical thought which underpins the National Food Service, looking at the gaps we fill, introspection on where we’ve come and looking forward to where next within the changing contexts in which we find ourselves.
Speakers:
Louis Pohl, founder of Foodhall Project, Sheffield & The National Food Service
Sean Roy Parker, Local Contact for NFS, South London
Megan Blake. More Than Just Food.
“A film about how community organisations are using food to help overcome loneliness and everyday food insecurity, while also transforming their communities. Eating together with others, what I call social eating, has so many benefits.
We have a crisis of loneliness. For those who are struggling to afford food, being able to afford social activities is also out of reach. People who have good social relationships live happier and better lives. Evidence shows that people who have heart attacks are more likely to still be alive in a year’s time if they have strong social networks. We also know that places where there is a sense of a community are more resilient.
The two communities featured in the film, Edlington in Doncaster and Goldthorpe in Barnsley, are both places that some would describe as highly deprived, in fact, they are both in the top 10% of highly deprived places in England. Both are ex-mining villages in Yorkshire. While once close-knit places, the loss of the mines and associated incomes and years of being at the sharp end of austerity policies have created places where there is struggle, low life expectancy, anti-social behaviour, and all the other ills that align with deprivation.”
Megan’s blog can be found here: https://geofoodie.org/map/
Full bins, empty bellies, lonely lives.
This is the full-length feature documentary on Britain's predicament of food waste on a massive scale while large numbers still experience hunger and food insecurity. Within this environmental and social catastrophe, people of all socioeconomic backgrounds battle loneliness. But how can these seemingly disparate strands be joined together to find triumphant resolution? Dan Vallin followed some of the members of the NFS campaign across the country, showing their individual efforts to tackle the connected issue of waste, hunger and social isolation.
Robin Dunbar at the NFS Symposium, Sheffield.
Robin Dunbar the Emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford and discoverer of the famous Dunbar number joins us in the Foodhall Project, Sheffield to deliver a lecture. Dunbar's research revealed that eating meals alone is the biggest single factor for unhappiness besides existing mental illness. He argues that the epidemic of loneliness can be clearly pinned to the removal of community dining and social eating spaces from our towns and cities. The talk was held during the first National food Service symposium formed as part of Sheffield's Festival Of the Mind in 2018.