One year on from the Highland Good Food Conference
It has been just over a year since the Highland Good Food Conference where individuals and organisations from across the Highlands came together across five wintery Mondays to discuss how we could transform our local food system. So much has happened since then, so we thought we would give you our top seven highlights!
1. Sustainable Food Places
Shortly after the conference, Highland Good Food Partnership (HGFP) became a member of Sustainable Food Places (SFP) – who are now one of our main funders – which is a network that brings together pioneering food partnerships from towns, cities, boroughs, districts and counties across the UK. Highland Good Food covers a huge and predominantly rural and sparsely populated area and it’s been great to connect with other partnerships that are similar to us in this way, e.g. Dumfries and Gallway. That said, it’s been really inspiring to hear what partners are doing in cities and urban areas and drawing comparisons in our work.
Some of Highland Good Food’s main objectives are influenced by our SFP membership. These objectives include facilitating and enabling a sustainable food movement across the Highlands, engaging with community planning partnerships, identifying key policy asks from Government as well as developing relationships with a range of Highland Council services (welfare, food waste, education, community, climate change, procurement, planning).
Our coordinator went to Edinburgh to meet up with some of the Scotland SFP members last year, for a day of strategy, feedback and looking forward and it was a welcome start to in-person meetings again. Sustainable Food Places is a partnership programme led by the Soil Association, Food Matters and Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming. It is funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and The National Lottery Community Fund.
2. Regional Food Group
As the Scotland Food & Drink Regional Food Group for the Highland region, we join an amazing network of local food groups all over Scotland working to support the local food and drink sector. Increasingly, people are looking to buy local food – where they live or where they visit – and we work to promote regional food businesses and encourage purchasing of local produce.
As the Regional Food Group we work with food tourism businesses and one of our main aims is to support the development of sustainable practice in this sector, from circular economy and food waste reduction to encouraging local supply.
3. Formalising the group
After the conference it was clear we needed a formal organisation to coordinate and support the changes everyone was keen to see. This meant recruiting trustees, drafting a constitution and applying to the Office of the Scottish Charities Regulator, which we did in April 2021.
As a SCIO (Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation) we are able to employ staff, take on assets and liabilities and apply for grants – so we can act as an “umbrella” for members’ food-related activities.
4. Recruiting a staff team
In July 2021 Highland Good Food Partnership officially employed its first staff. Josie, who some of you will remember from the conference, took on the role of Project Support Officer while a new face, Catriona was employed as the Highland Good Food Partnership Coordinator.
Since then we have had a few new people joining the team. Laura started as a volunteer for our involvement in COP26 events and is now a recognisable voice on our new podcast episodes. She also has the fun job of organising events for the Partnership!
Most recently, Reina has joined our team as the Highland Community Waste Partnership (HCWP) Project Officer for HGFP. She will be working to reduce food waste through collaborating with communities and other organisations across the Highlands.
5. COP26
In November 2021 we took part in Nourish Scotland’s Fork to Farm Global Dialogue at COP26 in Glasgow. The dialogue brought together farmers, food producers and policy-makers from around the world to enter into meaningful dialogue. The aim of the event was to build mutual understanding and cooperation in order to work towards creating resilient and sustainable food systems.
Individuals from the Highland Good Food Partnership were there in person whilst a small group joined the event online from the Highland Council offices in Inverness. We enjoyed an opening ceremony streamed live from coastal Kenya before partaking in conversation with food groups from Brazil and Mexico. It was truly fantastic to connect with groups from across the globe and find similarities, and learn from the differences, in our food systems.
As part of COP26, local and national authorities were asked to sign the Glasgow Climate Declaration. HGFP encouraged our partners to be bold leaders and with great delight The Highland Council became a leading signature of the declaration.
A beautiful graphic by Jem Milton who attended the Global Fork to Farm Dialogue in Glasgow and captured the highlights from the day.
6. Community Food Growing Strategy
The Highland Council recently developed and released their Community Food Growing Strategy, called Growing Our Future. This strategy was catalysed via the community empowerment act, where one of the outcomes was that Local Authorities would have to develop a community food growing strategy. HGFP endorsed this strategy and supported The Highland Council in their efforts to build capacity by employing a Community Food Growing Officer.
In the strategy you’ll find some great projects around Highland that are all doing amazing work around community food. There is a great diversity among the projects too. At Highland Good Food we are complimenting some of the work done in this strategy by developing a resource consisting of all community food growing projects in Highland to facilitate a knowledge, best practise and supportive exchange between projects.
We’re excited to work with Highland Council in the future on wider food system strategies that will include many more of the key aspects of a resilient food system.
Thurso Grows community garden.
7. Highland Community Waste Partnership
Earlier this year, Highland Good Food Partnership was announced as one of the eight community groups coming together across the Highlands as part of a new climate movement to help reduce consumption and waste. The Highland Community Waste Partnership, coordinated by Keep Scotland Beautiful, and funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, will raise awareness of the relationship between consumption and climate change, and work over three years to create solutions to address this.
HGFP is one of eight partners in the project. The others are:
- The Lochaber Environment Group
- Broadford and Strath Community Company
- Ullapool Community Trust
- Thurso Community Development Trust
- Lairg & District Learning Centre
- Velocity Café and Bicycle Workshop
- Transition Black Isle
We have loads of resources on our website for you to learn more about what is going on in the Highland food system; we are on our third podcast season and we have many blog posts hearing from those on the ground, making the changes we need! Delve in to find out more and if you’re interested to be involved, become a member of the Highland Good Food Partnership.