Bristol food growing community collaborate to support new education programme.

Tuesday 3rd March marks the launch of an exciting food growing competition for kids and teachers with green-fingered ambitions. The IncrEdible Schools competition will see 3 schools within the City of Bristol win gardening tools and the opportunity to create an ongoing growing project within their school and wider community.

In collaboration with the city-wide food festival Bristol Food Connections and sponsors Almondsbury Garden Centre, organisers Incredible Edible Bristol hope the competition will raise awareness of their new free-to-use IncrEdible Education Programme which has been developed to help support schools who might otherwise struggle to cover these important life skills.

“Food growing, rightly so, is now included on the national curriculum – and brilliant teaching aids from organisations like Garden Organic, RHS and Resource Futures are available,” explains Sara Venn, the food activist and horticulturist who co-founded Incredible Edible Bristol in January 2014, “but schools and teachers are already horribly over-stretched and unless they have a groundsman or staff member that happens to be a green-fingered grower, or the funds to bring someone in, they will struggle to turn theory into practice. We want to support teachers to implement a successful growing programme without it becoming immensely stressful so that’s what our IncrEdible Education Programme has been designed to do.”

Key to the initiative are hands-on site visits by the IncrEdible Education team. Teachers can then continue to implement their tailored growing programmes via a new e-learning website. Developed to bring all the available resources together in to one place in a user-friendly format, EdibleSchools.org.uk offers specially created ‘how to’ guides, forums for knowledge sharing and advice for engaging the wider community. Schools also have the opportunity to procure additional workshops and training, for both children and teachers, to further strengthen their food growing success.

The programme is being introduced to all schools within the City of Bristol initially, with plans to extend to the greater Bristol area over time. More information about the programme and how to enter the competition can be found at http://EdibleSchools.org.uk.

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Notes for editors
High resolution images of food growing work in schools are available upon request.
Contact: sara@ediblebristolorguk.wpcomstaging.com or call 07786 194805
PDF version of this release available here: IncrEdible-Competition-for-Bristol-Schools

Incredible Edible Bristol is a food growing movement working with communities to bring food to spaces in the public sphere which have often been unloved or underused. Working collaboratively with other organisations, we support food growing across the city, increasing communities access to healthy, fresh and organically grown fruit and vegetables. Through this process we hope to promote community resilience through food, the one thing that we all have in common. As schools are central to the community, we believe our IncrEdible Education programme will help bring communities together as well as teaching our young people important life skills. http://ediblebristol-org-uk.stackstaging.com

Bristol Food Connections is a community based food festival. The festival runs from 1-9th May 2015, starting with 3 days of food related activities in Millennium Square and College Green and then going on to see further community based events. http://www.bristolfoodconnections.com

Almondsbury Garden Centre is run by Park Garden Centres and are true supporters of community growing as well as of schools in Bristol. Based in Almondsbury they offer great service to the city of Bristol and have an outstanding array of plants on site all year round. http://www.parkgardencentres.co.uk/almondsbury

Photos of polytunnels and raised beds being built at a school in Bristol.