Sustainable Bristol

Dig Bristol submits city food plans

Posted on 20 August 2010

The Bristol Food Network’s Dig Bristol project has been submitted  to the  lottery local food fund. The proposal really creates a manageable initial project out of the overall Sustainable Food strategy for Bristol.

Dig Bristol will enable small scale community food groups around Bristol to work together to increase the amount of land and numbers of people involved in growing food across the city.

Over three years, Dig Bristol will:

• Double the scale of the community food sector in Bristol from 40 groups to 80, bringing in an additional 1.5 hectares of land into new food production, and match community groups to unused land.

• Enable existing groups to provide gardening mentors who will deliver 120 training sessions to build the capacity of new groups and skill up an additional 240 confident mentor gardeners.

• Establish new food gardening hubs around the city to encourage and mentor new groups.

• Raise awareness through high-profile events such as an annual Food Trail, which will be established as a key regional event, celebrating local food from ‘Spade to Plate’, featuring 40 community food garden venues and 2000 visitors.

• Enable the informal community of local food projects to develop into a strong and vibrant Bristol Food Network, which will be well known, and valued for its role in making Bristol a greener and more food-resilient city; and work as an intermediary between the statutory and community level partners.

This project is based on over 2 years of extensive consultation led by Bristol Food Network volunteers, which has stimulated new interest and support from Bristol City Council and NHS Bristol. The project builds a significant partnership across the city, responds to the specific needs of the community food growing sector and enables community projects to play their own crucial role in engaging people from the most deprived areas of the city in food growing.

Dig Bristol will fund a coordinator; new communications, including establishing an annual Food Trail, a website and digital resources; networking opportunities; training sessions and mentor gardeners to support community growing hubs.

Inspiring the city to grow food - the Council's veg bed at Castle Park in Bristol city centre.