Lucy: Before I start this episode, I just want to say a
huge thank you to the Lecker Patreon supporters. Your support
is crucial for the future of Lecker. And I'm so grateful. If
you're interested in becoming a patron of the podcast, you can
head to patreon.com/leckerpodcast.
This is Lecker. I'm Lucy Dearlove. I'm so glad to be back
in your podcast feed for the first episode of 2022. And I
hope it's a good year for you. I'm so delighted that some new
listeners discovered Lecker last year as a result of me making
the series about kitchens. Welcome, I'm so glad to have you
with us...with me. This year, I'm going to be releasing
monthly episodes. And some of the episodes I'm going to be
making this year are going to be profiles of particular people or
particular dishes, sometimes...some of them are
going to be a bit more like the Kitchens episodes where they're
kind of built around a specific theme, almost like an audio
essay. I've got lots of ideas and plans, and I'm so excited to
be sharing them with you. I wanted to start the year doing
something that I've actually never done before, which is kind
of re-releasing a previous episode. And I say kind of
because being the eternal perfectionist that I am. And
yes, I do say that is my weak point in job interviews. I
couldn't leave it alone. So I have actually gone back into the
original episode that I made back in 2017, and re-edited it.
And there's some bits in there that I didn't put in the
original edit. So it's kind of a director's cut, even though I
made the first one as well. The reason that I've done this is
because looking back over the past few years of making Lecker,
I really think that actually this episode, in particular
making it and kind of editing it and meeting the people involved
in it has had a huge impact on shaping the way that I now think
and feel about food and the world. It was a real kind of
amazing experience meeting Dee and Leslie, who you are about to
meet too. I wanted to share this with the new listeners that the
podcast has met since 2017. And if you have heard this episode
before, as I mentioned, this is a new version. But also I have
something else for you. If you stick around till the end. There
is actually an update from Leslie about what has happened
since then. So what's happened over the past five years really,
and it's kind of amazing. I'm really excited for the future.
So first of all, I want to take you back. The air is 2017 I'm a
little baby podcaster. I've got my mic in hand, and I've got the
tube to North London and we find ourselves in a kitchen in a
community centre on the south Kilburn estate.
Leslie: peppers red pepper, onion garlic,
Dee: coconut milk
Leslie: that's for the stew and then we have rice, salad.
Tonight, we're having a special treat for those who eat meat.
Dee's making a marinated pork stew.
Lucy: Oh, wow.
Leslie: Yeah.
Dee: Yes. We're making sort of Peruvian-inspired beans.
Inspired.
Lucy: So can you tell me a bit about yourself? Maybe you can
introduce yourself.
Leslie: Oh, okay. My name is Leslie Barson. I've worked in
this building for nearly 25 years. And we started this
project, we've got a community centre project with working with
young people. And we started this project about nearly three
years ago, because Dee is a wonderful cook. But it's more
than food. It's about community through food. So it's all kinds
of activities. So we have tonight we've got film night,
and so we have a meal together and then we watch film and
discuss it. And then we also have a Friday night meal.
That...which is a community meal, it's...that's cooked by
someone else. And that's become very, very popular, where we
also have surplus food that people can take, which are
collected...we get it delivered from a wonderful charity called
City Harvest. And we also collect from two Marks and
Spencers who've been very good to us. And we've also been lucky
enough to get a grant...I'm not sure we're allowed to mention
yeah, oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, okay, evening
dispossess...Evening Standard dispossessed award for a big
project, a year long project, so it's for a garden trainer and a
cooking trainer. So the idea is that people who are food
insecure - and we're working with North Paddington food bank
will be able to come here and either bring some food that
they, they're bit bored with, or they don't know what how to cook
it. Because when you're given stuff, you don't always know
what to do with it. So it's a drop in. So it's very much about
what the people who come need. And if they all say, look, we'd
really like to know how to make bread or make our own pizzas or
whatever, our cooking trainer, ie Dee, will be able to help
them and, you know, teach them and she'll be she's got at her
fingertips, you know, knowledge that, that she can give so that,
you know, people can just ask questions immediately and get
the...get an answer for it. And also, because we think gardening
is very important, and that understanding the whole...where
food comes from is very important. So it's not just
about what turns up on your plate or what's on the shelves
at the supermarket. But how it's grown, how difficult it is or
how easy it is, how enjoyable it is, how...what hard work, it is
why you need a community. So and it's also very therapeutic. And
there's a lot of people looking at gardening as...it lessens
isolation, and it's physically demanding in a way that, you
know, being at home isn't. So there's a bit of exercise, it's
not tremendous exercise. And so it's, it has a lot of benefits
to it. So we feel that that's part of the project of
empowering community through food.
Lucy: Great. And what's your what's your background? And
what, how did you come into this? Have you always been
interested in food?
Leslie: Well, I'm interested in food because I eat it! And I
like it. Yeah. I've never been a great cook. But my friend,
obviously is a great cook. And it's a great honour really to
work with her work alongside her and I'm learning loads about
cooking and about, you know how to make things really taste good
with very little money. I mean, it's more about spices and
understanding what goes with what, but also Deee - which I
always say what I love about Dee, I'm a great history buff,
and she's got a knowledge of food, where it comes from and
how it's travelled across the world with various, you know
trades that have gone all over the world. And understanding
that and sometimes, you know, you have crazy things happening
like apparently, the oldest rice from West Africa is now grown in
East America because it was brought over by the slaves and
it's it's been lost in Africa. But it's, it's growing in what
is it? Georgia or, the Carolinas or something. So the most
authentic, you know, this, these kind of crazy things that we
have in the modern world, and how many types of rice there are
and how many varieties we're losing and so on. And Dee is
absolutely amazing and has educated me about those sorts of
things. So that's it's a pleasure to work with her.
Lucy: Can you introduce yourself, please?
Dee: Alright, so my name is Dee Woods. I'm the cook at Granville
Community Kitchen. I'm also the London Slow Food Ambassador 2016
and BBC Cook of the Year 2016.
Lucy: Hey! How did that come about, the awards?
Dee: Um, basically from the work we've been doing here at the
Granville Community Kitchen. And I think a bit of my political
engagement as well, because I'm involved in the slow food
movement, and food sovereignty movement. And with the sort of
community food growers network. And we've been so lobbying,
yeah, the GLA with an organization called JustSpace
who are a network of grassroots community groups. So been sort
of really involved in policy and the other direction of things,
but from the ground up, so cooking up a bit of revolution,
as it were!
Lucy: I like it! Can you tell me, sort of explain exactly what
the slow food movement is, and what the food sovereignty
movement as well please?
Dee: Okay, um, there are similarities. They do sort of
crossover. But slow food is more about the enjoyment of food, the
preservation of food, diverse food cultures, good food fall.
You know, and, you know, protecting the interests of
producers and biodiversity. Food sovereignty, which began in the
global south is sort of producer led, sort of movements about
workers rights, sorta agro-ecology, which is about
sort of sustainable ways of farming, and sort of catching
fish and all that sort of stuff. And there's something in there
about sort of consumers - I don't like word consumers, we
need to change that we're all eaters. But ya know, the
emphasis is more on farmers and producers. And likewise, all the
stuff around food policy from sort of international level
right on to local level. But they marry. It's all
interconnected.....(Leslie inaudible in the background) And
yeah, that's okay.
Lucy: Just checking the size of the pepper, very important.
Dee: And the other sort of aspect that we bring in here at
Granville community kitchen would be social justice, because
a lot of the issues aren't necessarily food issues, they're
issues, around class, opportunity, and poverty,
gender, all the other sort of isms. So that's a very important
issue that we work from. So I mean, yeah, food food, is that
sort of, for people who are into the sort of jargon, ya know,
represents that sort of intersectionality. Yeah? And if
we look at our food system, ya know, it's like, our modern food
system is based on the oppression of others, and the
destruction of our earth. So we need to change that.
Lucy: And so you're kind of on a really small level here trying
to do that?
Dee: Um, yeah, because I think, you know, eating is the most
political act that anyone can do. Right? Choices of where we
buy our food, and what type of food and buy is a political act.
So it is about engaging people breaking down all those jargon
words, and making people realize that, you know, you can hold our
politicians and ya know people in local government accountable.
Yeah. And sort of demand that well, okay, we want access to
better food, that we want better wages, so that we can afford to
buy better food. Right. And now that I've been appointed to the
London Food Board, I'm hoping that's one of the areas that we
could work on, ya know, making sort of good food accessible at
a more local level. Ensure that it's also culturally
appropriate. Yeah, so it's not always about the anti fat thing
or the anti sugar thing. Ya know, it's about creating
opportunities, creating sort of community food hubs that include
urban agriculture, small marketplaces, opportunities for
small food producers. And, yeah, we need to celebrate our diverse
food culture that we have here in the UK. Yeah, I think um,
London, especially, London is unique in the world. I think you
know, right here in Brent, we have, what, almost 400 languages
spoken? Right. So that's 400 different food cultures right
there. Alright? But then you see people, and nothing's wrong with
chips. I love chips. Alright? But I prefer to see someone from
that particular culture, celebrating their own food
before it's lost.
Lucy: So what can we do to get it back?
Dee: Um...I think one of the things we need to do is find
sustainable ways of sourcing foods. So like, we're cooking
plantains...it's one of cheapest foods you can buy at
supermarkets now, corner shops, alright, but it can't be
sustainable if you getting three or four for about a pound.
Right? How much is the farmer actually getting? Right? So
yeah, it's things like that we need to do, but we also need to
be growing a lot more things here. So we have this herb on
the windowsill. Yeah, it goes by many different names. It comes
from the Caribbean...supposedly originated in West Africa, but
it grows wild throughout the Caribbean, parts of South
America. And it grows perfectly well here. There are a lot of
foods and herbs can be grown here and not imported. Yeah,
which would sort of create jobs here and sort of reduce
oppression on the other side of the world.
Lucy: What's it called, what names does it go by?
Dee: Cuban oregano...in the southern Caribbean is called Big
Leaf thyme. It is in the Ark of Taste, which is a slow food
project about rescuing and preserving sort of rare foods
and plants and herbs. So we use it in most of our cooking.
Lucy: Nice!
Dee: And you may take away a plants if you need to. That's
what we do. We propagate them and we give it away.
Lucy: So take cuttings from it. Yeah. Great. So Dee can you tell
me a bit about your background in food? How did you learn to
cook?
Dee: Like Leslie, I love food, and I love to eat. But I grew up
in a family of food producers, entrepreneurs, my dad is a
farmer. So always grew up with, around food and making food and
sort of big family, big family occasions, we were always
cooking. And that sort of just grew and growing up in Trinidad
and Tobago, which is a multicultural society, we had
all these wonderful sort of food cultures. And I just took it
from there and just kept cooking and learning more and I'm always
learning and a lot of food that I cook here, I try to reflect
the sort of cultures around here. So we've cooked from, from
Tonga, we're planning a Fiji evening. Yeah. So, um, you know,
it's like, when you cook these things, you realize how similar
your cooking techniques are, and your ingredients and your
flavours. And, you know, it's just like nuances. So for me,
you know, food is that great uniter, ya know, brings people
together,
Leslie: We can't really get, as Dee was saying, good food
without challenging the economic system that we're in. Because
we're saying by don't eating, not eating sliced bread by
making your own bread, which is actually incredibly easy, and
very, very cheap. And you could make your own bread every day.
Dee's got a fantastic recipe which you don't even need to let
rise. You just put it in the fridge and you take out a loaf
size and put it in the oven and 40 minutes later, you've got a
fresh bread. Now, it's like, you know, people could learn to do
that. I mean, it's a change of their routine. But it doesn't
take time, as you think, it takes time to change. But once
you've understood it, and once you've changed over to that,
it's easy. And then you know your children see you doing
that, your elders see you doing that it just becomes part of
life. Oh, what are you doing? Oh this bread is delicious? Oh, my
goodness, hot bread. You know, it's fantastic... It
changes...not by itself, but through you changing your
habits. You change other people. It's like, a kind of pebble in
the water.
Lucy: The butterfly effect?
Leslie: Exactly.
Dee: Alright, so aduki beans, some garlic and onions, red
peppers. Yeah. And I think that's another issue. Because a
few weeks ago, we had this issue where we weren't getting
lettuces, and peppers, courgettes, peppers as well.
There's an issue now with avocados. I think we need to eat
sorta seasonally, as local as possible. And, you know, have
sorta fair trade or beyond fair trade agreements to purchase
food from other countries. With Brexit happening, yeah, we don't
know what's going to happen. So a lot of these foods are coming
from Spain. So we're already getting peppers and strawberries
and lots of summer foods. Yeah. We're gonna have to change our
eating habits. Alright. So lots...a lot more kale and
cabbage is what they call the hunger gap food.
Lucy: It's amazing how much that...like how people reacted
to that food shortage. I mean, it wasn't a food shortage. It
was a few things. Yeah, they were having trouble getting
them. And you know, it was like, they had to put signs up in the
supermarket because people were so, you know, kind of confused
and, by it. People are so used to being able to get exactly
what they want at any time.
Dee: Right, and we can't do that and most of the world eats, you
know, seasonally. Yeah, you eat what is locally available and
then occasionally you'll have some of the imported food.
Alright, so we need we need to change, we really do need to
change.
Leslie: I don't know when we changed away because when I was
a child, I mean is a little bit ago, but not that long ago,
there was no dinosaurs on the earth. We used to eat season-
and we only had for example, satsumas or Clementine, we had
them, you know October ish to December and that was it. What
happened now? I I don't like eating them in the summer!
Dee: Look at the history of supermarkets, right. Yeah, that
convenience of being, getting, being able to get everything
under one roof. Any time of the year, yeah, happened with
supermarkets.
Leslie: But it has happened quickly, rarely. I mean, it's
20, 30 years. It's not, we're not talking, you know, hundreds
of years here. And I feel, I hope that it could change back
again as quickly. And this idea that we can get...I mean, when
you look at your grapes, and you see they've come from Chile, you
know, which is the other side of the world and you've bought them
for £1.25. I mean, the mind boggles, what are the people
there getting paid.
Dee: And then sorta, our sorta food fads as well impact on
other cultures and communities. So like quinoa, alright, local
people cannot afford to make...to buy it anymore. And
that was their staple food. So what happens, they buy foods
that their systems aren't used to, and they end up with
nutrition transition, and all these lifestyle diseases,
because they start eating rubbish. Yeah, but we can grow
quinoa here, there are farmers who are growing it and growing
it organically. Sorta bigger agricultural ways or chemicals
as well. But we can grow here, so we need to grow more, but we
don't use all our land. And we need to be using our land more
for farming or not for putting up sorta posh housing, or
keeping up for, for its value. Yeah, as an investment, we need
to use our land.
Leslie: [Outisde noises, a plane overhead] So this is our small
food garden. So we had...and that's that's the main hall in
there. These are fig trees, which might have some small figs
on them. There's three of them here, here and here. And then
this is an apple that we rescued. So we've got three
raised beds. And then, what...because there's going to
be building works we're using this these crate idea, which
means that we can move it around, we can move the....so
this is lemon balm, chives, everything needs watering! This
is chard, and various...oh God, name escapes me. Kale! Chards
and kale. So they're easy growing plants.
Lucy: The colours of those are amazing.
Leslie: Hi love, you alright! And then we've got different
types of onion. Oh, yeah. And this is this is some, this is
some kind of sage or some kind of a herb here, right. Now what
was I hoping to plant, so what we do normally is put cardboard
down, then put compost on top rather than digging. You feed
the soil from above.
Unnamed male voice: Oh is that what stops the weeds from coming
through?
Leslie: Yeah, exactly. And to feed the soil because you don't
want to dig because it's really hard work. We've got quite a few
cherries that were planted long before so that's a big cherry
there by the wall. [Police siren goes past] Stupidest place for
it. And that's another baby cherry. Which, obviously, but I
don't know....And this is a cherry here
Lucy: The big one?
Leslie: Well, the big one behind is a plane but this one here is
a cherry. And that's our sort of compost area and stuff like
that. Yeah, we still need watering. But we've got kids
coming tomorrow. So we'll water it tomorrow.
Lucy: They'll love to do that!
Leslie: They love doing it, it's amazing. So I have to cut some
leaves for Dee, she wants chard and kale. So like these two,
we're gonna stick them all in the stew
Lucy: [Back in the kitchen] So are you just making a salad
Leslie?
Leslie: Yes. We've got lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes and spring
onions. And usually we do...I'm not sure what we're doing
tonight. But usually we just do a lemon dressing and salt. And
are we doing anything else in the salad?
Dee: Probably a lime dressing
Leslie: Lime, because we're Peruvian. So we're a bit...and
then we have rice as well and...
Dee: Not quinoa because we can't afford locally grown quinoa.
Lucy: So everything you buy is ethically sourced?
Dee: Ethically sourced, we grow some. We're trying to encourage
the development of sort of more food projects in West London.
You get loads in South London, East London, North London, but
they're few and far between in West London.
Lucy: Why is that?
Dee: Um, I don't know and we have a lot of land in West
London especially on the outer boroughs. So that's something
but we're hoping to be developing more.
Leslie: They were traditionally industrial, industry out in the
west, right? And that's gradually disappearing or
certainly partially disappearing. There is some.
Dee: Cos in Hillingdon, Harrow, that's traditionally farmland.
Some of it is actually listed, and the buildings are listed,
yeah because they're still carved out in this 18th century
sorta farmland way so...but, you know, before we become history
from starvation, I think we should be using some of that
land.
Lucy: Yeah. But it's just too valuable to property developers,
that's the trouble isn't it.
Leslie: And Heathrow Airport, of course, a big issue. Yes. Yes.
Dee: Yeah.
So there used to be lots of market gardens all around where
Heathrow is, and we were just out there on the weekend. And
there was an older man telling me that when he was a boy, they
were strawberry fields as far as the eye could see. And they, you
know, people would work as as labourers on the farm and would
be picking strawberries. So he remembers the year...so you
know, sort of May June July ish, picking strawberries and then
you go into salads. And then so there was a, you know, rotation
of the year's crops feeding London or some of London, not
the whole of London, because I think there were pockets like
this all over London. Kent, obviously was the breadbasket,
er the food basket as well.
Dee: [Muffled] Here was farmland.
Leslie: Yes, yeah. Here was farmland up until the 1880s,
which isn't that long ago, you know, 120 years or so. And you
can see on the map, we've got maps outside, of the growth of
the development of housing, and Queen's Park was actually an
agricultural show. That's what saved it. So all the, you know,
the cattle were brought up there and horses and things and so
yeah, and you can see that marked on the map. And I'm sure
that's, that's why it's stayed a park. But out by Heathrow is
much more recently, was food growing. And there are still,
there's still farms out there. Yeah, I've taken a walk out
there...
Dee: Yes, small market gardens. But yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Lucy: So what's this area like now?
Leslie: Um. The immediate area is called South Kilburn estate.
And it's been regenerated, practically constantly since
1959. After the war, and even before the war, it was what's...
Victorian slums. So, you know, people came in...this building
was built to do good for the poor of Kilburn, for example, by
the St. John's Presbyterian Church in St. John's Wood. So
there, this was a poor area, and the pictures that you see, are
awful, you know, that there was real slums. So in the 50s, what
they decided to do, bless their hearts, was tear it all down,
for which I can never forgive them! Rather than doing it up
and making it into nice flats. But nevermind, it's all you
know, a lot of a lot of the buildings you'll see from that
time, the late 50s, early 60s. And then it's constantly because
it's, it's had lots and lots of social problems, which were not
dealt with. Since then, it's been, you know, there's a lot of
low, high unemployment, low educational attainment levels,
lot of youth problems, you know, just everything that you would
expect in an inner city. And now we're going through a period of
intense regeneration, which means that the people who live
here are being moved around...the older residents,
long term residents, and their houses are being torn down and
twice as many houses are being put back. And the, the twice as
many again are all luxury flats. So you've got this crazy
situation where you've got the old Council tenants in blocks,
and next to them are people who've paid 100... 500,000 for a
one bedroom flat and yeah, so it's, it's crazy. So you have
the very needy and the very wealthy and they don't talk to
each other much. And this building is one of the
oldest...well, it's a community centre in the area and next door
as well, the Carlton Centre are somewhat under threat as well. I
think the council realizes they need some community space, but
they'd like to build some housing on this site. And were
arguing that if you're putting twice as many people into a very
dense small area of London, you need twice as much community
space, I think, because you need this to work somehow and
people...the people need to meet each other somewhere. So houses
are now built, they used to be built...most of the blocks here
have have some kind of tenant hall or community space. They're
now built without those. So there's nowhere to meet anybody.
There's nowhere to discuss problems. There's nowhere to
have a lunch or supper or a film night to get to know your
neighbour. So that you...when they make a lot of noise, you
think, Oh, it's okay. Because it's only Joan and she's needs
to shout at certain times or whatever, or that's the lovely
little girl, you know. So you know, you need those spaces to
understand each other and to develop relationships.
Otherwise, you're just...grrrr, those people over there. You
know that I don't like them. I don't know them. They
funny...they eat funny food, they wear funny clothes,
whatever, you know? So we are in a constant, continual struggle
here...We're still here! That's the good news. But we we can't
let the guard down. We're not...we're not safe. Yeah. So
we're but Dee and I are determined. We've got very sharp
elbows! To keep as much community, as much community
space as possible, and to keep these centres for the for the
community of South Kilburn.
There used to be a market in South Kilburn. And we would love
to see that come back. And we have a farmers market in Queens
Park, which is very, very wealthy, and wonderful produce,
but just inaccessible.
Dee: So we need to bring farmers markets back to the people. Yes.
So what Slow Food call Earth markets. So that's perhaps what
we need here, an Earth Market. Yes. And if we get our goats,
yeah? Because there's a brilliant project in Bristol
called Street Goat. And Bristol is highly urbanized, just like
London. And what they do...they keep goats for milk to make
cheese. And with the young male goats, they use that to manage
public land. And then...and then when they're a couple years old,
then they sort of slaughter them and sell them for meat. Yeah,
so, you know, that's what every community should have, some sort
of small community farm where they have sort of animals, bees,
you know, chickens for eggs. Yeah, that'd be great. But
that's how it used to be be, we need to look back and take some
lessons, I think some people got carried away with sort of
population size, and thinking that we don't produce enough
food to feed everyone, but we produce enough food right now to
feed everyone.
Leslie: 70% of the world's food is produced by subsistence
farmers. It's not produced by massive mono cropping. And this
is such a dicey road to go down because one little disease and
Whoops, that's it, the whole you know, whereas...
Dee: That's happening with coffee right now, that's
happening with this variety of bananas right now. Yeah, because
of that, monocropping so we do need to go back to those
traditional ways of doing coffee and bananas within a sort of
forest system and small scale. And that might mean, okay, we
don't have as much coffee here in the West, yeah, but we have
better coffee and we're supporting farmers and the sorts
of countries
Leslie: We need to pay the prices that it costs...that is
good for us. Actually, you know,
Dee: We over eat. There's a brilliant book by Raj Patel,
Stuffed and Starved. Yeah, so us in the West, we're stuffed and
we're malnutritioned. Yeah, because we're not eating right
types of food whereas in global south, you know, people are
eating a lot less and people are starving. But I think it's what,
seven out of the 10 best diets in the world are in Africa.
Right? Because, ya know, it's a lot less food. It isn't all this
rubbish. They eat seasonally? Yeah, a lot less meat. So, yeah.
Leslie: We're not islands, we can't be self sufficient. And I
think this is another myth that....to be ecological you
need to be able to grow and produce everything yourself. No,
we need community we need, you know, you're good at projects.
I'm really good at cabbage or whatever. And we swap you know,
or the ground that I'm working on is you know...whatever.
Exactly. So we needed a different relationship to our
products
[Music starts, a different clip starts, voicenote type audio]
Hello everyone in Lecker podcast land. Thank you Lucy for asking
us for an update. A lot of things have changed since we did
our first podcast with you. In March 20, when the virus first
hit, the people who were cooking our community meal left and said
they couldn't do it safely anymore. So for a couple of
weeks, we cooked and handed the food out through the doors. And
then we were also getting some surplus food from City Harvest,
we werere handing that out. And gradually over the nearly 18
months to 20 months, this has grown into an enormous Food Aid
project which we've been getting bigger and bigger and more and
more important in Brent and Westminster and Camden. So we're
right on the corner of the three boroughs. So we started off
serving about 50 to 70 households. And we're now
serving about 300. At this point, we're trying to make the
deliveries less because they're very difficult, it's very
difficult to find drivers and driving is a pain in the neck.
And this is not what we do. We, we see food aid as a small
bandage on top of a gaping wound. And as we've always said,
There's no such thing as food poverty, there's just poverty,
many of the people who collect from us are working, they have
such high bills, they have such bad working conditions in the
sense of zero hours contracts or no contracts at all, a lot of
people are drivers or care workers who have no contracts.
And what we need to tackle is conditions of work and the price
of food and the availability of localized food. So we're hoping
to gradually begin to stop the food aid work by the summer of
22. But we have to be...do that very carefully and managed in
order that people aren't badly affected by it.
So feeding over 1200 people a week is really a huge sort of
military operation. And something that's quite, we're
quite proud that we've been able to do it, we're still doing it.
But as I say it's not where our heart lies, except as emergency
provision. Of course, to stop people going hungry. At the same
time in March 20, maybe a little bit later, we were also looking
into what's called the Good Food Box. And this was started in
October 20. It's a veg box scheme aimed at low income
families. So there's three different prices that you choose
where what you pay. So there's Go, Start and Solidarity price
and solidarity prices a little bit higher in order that we can
give a lower price for low income families. And we buy food
direct from farmers, or some of it we've actually grown in South
Kilburn - I'll tell you about another project that we're
starting soon in order that we can feed the good food box, I
mean, put food into the good food box. Because of the good
food box and, and because of the growth of the, of the
organization in terms of how well known it is. We've grown
enormously, we now have six part time staff. We've just started
the community meals again, for that we've partnered with a
group called Sufra who are also another food project in Brent.
And on Friday nights, we now have people starting to come
back again to have food with us, which is really, really nice.
And we're hoping to have open mic sessions then or we had a
game session, quizzes, some kind of activity that draws us
together. We've also been helping with their regeneration
problems. So people being moved from place to place or not
wanting their building to come down and try, how can they get,
convince the council not to do this. We've helped write a
community plan with two of the buildings and at the moment
we're helping write a community plan for the Granville itself,
and about its management and how that will happen hopefully with
the community management board after it's had its regeneration.
We also had a wonderful heritage art project where we, we...four
unsung heroes of South Kilburn. They were...their portraits were
drawn, and they're put up on the hoarding, so that there's many
many hoardings, wooden fences behind, blocking out all the
building sides of, of all the work the regeneration work
that's going on in the area. So these four women are, are put up
on those boards as a beautiful reminder of some of the unsung
heroes of South Kilburn. They're all community activists, they've
spent their lives helping others and doing things and nobody
knows about them really, except people that have met them and
are affected by it. We've also been helping in the area
with...helping Brent and working on political campaigns, notably
the Right to Food, that food should be a right, not just left
to the market. And we're hoping that Brent will become a right
to food borough, and that gradually, all the boroughs in
London will take this on, and then we can convince regional
government, the mayor's office and then central government that
food is a right. And we've also been working with Brent on the
climate emergency and growing food and having more spaces to
grow food. And last, but not at all least, and very, very most
exciting, is we've hopefully, I think I don't want to jinx it!
So we're starting a farm, a small market garden in
Rickmansworth. Should be starting in February ish. So
that growing there, we'll have two part time growers working on
the farm. And we hope that the food there will then feed the
good food box, and the good food box, part of the attributes of
the good food boxes that it thinks about culturally
appropriate food. And we have a lot of people in the south
Kilburn area who are either from Southern Mediterranean or North
African states, and they are looking for food from those
cultures, and we will be able to supply food that's you know, in
polytunnels, we'll be able to grow more food that's from those
cultures, we hope. At the moment, we have a North European
box and an African Caribbean box. So it's really, really
exciting. The other aspect of the farm is going to be
education so that young people we hope from South Kilburn or
from the inner urban settings, will be able to go out in
various ways on different schemes to the farm and work on
the farm and see, to try and change the nature of people's
thought around growing work, which often is seen as a
peasantry, it's seen as backbreaking, repetitive,
boring, or, in many cases, it's, it's connected to slavery and
connected to the worst, most harsh and...injustices that the
world has seen. So we need to change that narrative and show
that it's a way out of the climate crisis, and that it's
exciting work and that it's good for your health, and that it's
creative work, which it is, and work with agro ecological
farming practices, and teachers and so on who will pass on those
skills and train up a younger generation in good food jobs. So
we're very, very busy. And it's really great that you're
releasing our podcast from a couple of years ago. I haven't
listened to it recently. But I should do. And thank you very
much for your continued interest in us. And we hope to speak
together soon. Thanks very much. Bye.
Lucy: You can find out more about the Granville and the work
that Dee and Leslie are doing with everyone involved there at
Granvillecommunitykitchen.org.uk. I'm so excited about the farm
and the good food box project that they do just Yeah, it's
brilliant. And also if you want to read more about the project,
Ruby Tandoh wrote a piece for Vittles last year about the
Granville and the community and the area, which is 100% worth
reading, so you can find that online. Thanks for joining me
for the first episode of Lecker of 2022. I will be back next
month with a brand new episode. Not a re-edit this time, I
promise. But I hope you enjoyed this little step back in time
and also look to the future. If you're a fan of Lecker, here's
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for listening.
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