Edible Eastbourne - ethos, values, principles

The Town Team might grow some food in highly visable spots in town with their own work force. If they do start growing, (or want to use the event to promote the idea) they would be ideal partners.
Obviously

Oh as partners yes, that would make sense that they have a table and give a talk as they are planning to grow food too.
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Would still like to see local people showing what they can make, create, cook, ie vegetarian, vegan stalls, raw food, if we are to encourage local food growing we need to show how and the whole process of grow- cook -eat. To demonstrate container growing we could have a table for kids to plant seeds and take them home to grow. Engaging the young our future stewards of our food.

Re the allotment society I have a contact at the allotment society who will make a great speaker, shall I ask her if she wants to give a talk?

I agree. We grow food to eat it [and do others thing with it from making medicines to lavender drawer pouches].

If we can engage people around different areas of food we are opening it to a wider interest group. When people are inspired with food that they can taste then it might encourage them to want to grow more.

Those who grow don't always have to prepare There can be a big community exchange, someone grows berries, gives some to someone else they make something from it and give back some of it to the grower.

I also, on second thoughts,I want to know more about the Town Team idea. They don't grow any food and they aren't considered growing experts. Would they have a stall and in which case have they got anything to use around growing. I don't really see them as a strong motivator right now at this stage to interest people in growing food. What could they give a talk about 'that they want to grow food' Maybe that's better left till they''ve decided on what they want to do.

I understand the Town Team are planning on growing edible food outside Eastbourne shops. They already have formed a team to do this and have already taken advice from Spencer and Fiona on what to grow and how, and will consult even more widely within Transition Town Eastbourne when they get going. And as Town Team is made up of some influential business people, then they would be valuable allies in helping to gain publicity and support for the wider Edible Eastbourne vision. Allowing them to say a few words would perhaps both encourage them to support even more food growing initiatives and demonstrate yet another partner we are willing to work with.

Well, I thought we were discussing the format, or at least part of it...
Never mind, whatever the Edible Eastbourne co-ordinators decide at their meetings is fine by me.

Andrew, I do feel a bit hurt given that I was speaking to Town Team months ago and gave them the very simple idea to grow rosemary and lavender as perennial all round stuff. There was even some talk of local artists helping with recycled at installations...

I would be interested as to what their next steps are and what they now plan to do and how this project has progressed.

As the majority has already decided that Town Team are going to give a short talk this is probably a bit moot.

I do understand your motives in terms of involving businesses and people who can fund stuff and also want to see this event be equally appealing at grass roots level with community involvement. We also need stuff that will involve the community and excite people from different angles around food growing.

Allotments are great and there is a huge waiting list so unless they present an allotment sharing scheme they are just showing something that is not available to most people. If they can focus their talk on the benefits of working in one place together, sharing ideas etc.. that would be nice.

RWCG might be inspiring but also most of that was done with a lot of labor from us. We need to be careful to not be seen as the force that comes in and starts out a garden right now as we haven't enough people to do that. It might be nice for us to give out copies of the flow chart and say 'here's how you can do it yourselves'

Matthew 25 is a good example where the community the garden served did all the labor and feel invested. The clients got involved in creating a better service for people like them. The garden now feeds the kitchen. They had help from the mayors fund and the mayor's chauffeur who is a regular gardener type.

A school garden started at Haven, it might be nice to invite them along to exhibit pictures and talk to people about how to start a garden at your school.

Karen has more experience, I believe, than any of us of starting community gardens and has been plugging at this for a very long time. She has two under her belt and is about to start another.

The way I see it is that we shouldn't agree on anything until we have more idea on the table and can sift through and see how they'll fit together to make it an inspiring event for the people and perhaps involve them too. I like the idea of an open space visioning thing.. so that people feel part of it by contributing their visions and ideas. Is there room for this?

We might include permaculture as it one of the foundations of transition.

And, are we focusing on growing food and not preparing food? Is Edible Eastbourne only to be set up as about growing?

Yes, We can assume from these votes that the group overall prefers to concentrate on community food growing and not food preparation... Unless it is directly related like preserving, pickling etc. For example, definitely not... healthy food vs unhealthy food. Strictly speaking, this doesn't form part of our Transition Town's objectives anyway. Why confuse the matter?

If we are inspired by Incredible Edible Todmorden, because they grow food everywhere, then the Town Team being inspired to do more is a good thing. We might need to put our personal feelings to one side sometimes to get the job done.