Food and Climate Actions News: West

Our Food and Climate Action project Community Activator for the West, Ailee, has been busy over the last quarter. Read on to find out more about the brilliant work she's been up to help bring communities together over food and embed climate action in food growing and cooking activities!

Supper Club 

The “Supper Club” is a community cookery group that runs out of Heart of Scotstoun Community Centre generally on the last Thursday of the month, from 5 - 8pm. The Supper Club is delivered as a joint project from FCA & GET. The group has a focus on simple, affordable & climate friendly meals, and aims to bring people together & stimulate conversations around climate action, over the act of cooking & sharing a meal. The group welcomes people of all ages, skills & abilities. 

Back in March, Supper Club celebrated Ramadan with the traditional Sudanese dish of tagalia - a lamb stew - served with Asida. For pudding, participants made a classic Victoria Sponge to celebrate Easter, as well as some baking kindly prepared by a participant at home. This was accompanied by the sharing of stories, memories & rituals that surround these celebrations. 

“…We are all so relaxed around one another I would never have had an opportunity to meet our supper club members who have such different backgrounds and cultures. It's been a privilege to learn how others live their lives, cook and eat.”

Over the spring & summer months, the supper club sampled dishes from all over the world, swapping some ingredients for seasonal produce grown in Scotland. Highlights for the group have included wild garlic & cheddar scones, Mexican tacos, & Kurdish Kehlani (a type of bread).

Linking in with the Full of Beans campaign between GCFN & Glasgow Food Policy Partnership, which aims to get Glasgow eating more beans for people & planetary health, Supper Club’s May session focussed on bean dishes, including a black bean brownie - which had mixed reviews! The group are also growing some beans in the Heart of Scotstoun’s community garden, which they look forward to harvesting soon.

Next session: September 5th, 5 - 8pm, Heart of Scotstoun, & then the last Thursday of the month 

If you’re interested in coming along, or have any questions, get in touch with Ailee at [email protected]

West: Community Growing Network

The Community Growing Network is for anyone who is involved with (or wants to get involved with) community growing in the west of Glasgow. Come together to share a lunch, hear about other local growing projects, & support one another. We meet regularly in person at various local growing projects. 

May saw our first meeting at the Heart of Scotstoun, where we heard presentations from Love Thornwood, Kingsway Community Garden, Knightswood Community Gardening Group & Friends of Knightswood Park about their community projects, before engaging in some “world cafe” discussions about urban growing in Glasgow. 

The last session in August was kindly hosted by Kingsway Community Connections, where we were given a tour of the community garden, & given some tips on various gardening skills by Eric, the community gardener.

“It was great meeting people with a great knowledge and enthusiasm for growing herbs, fruit, flowers and vegetables in a community setting.”

Next session: September 17th, 9.45 - 12.15pm at Knightswood Community Centre, kindly hosted by Knightswood Community Centre Gardening Group. More info & booking coming soon.

Thornwood Pitches Project

The FCA project & GET have been working in partnership with local community group, Love Thornwood, supported by Cllr Lana-Reid, to explore options to improve the pitch area at Thornwood Primary. Back in March, GET created & launched a survey assessing community support for this. The survey was open for 8 weeks & received 162 responses (roughly 2% of the population of Thornwood), & found that the Thornwood community were overwhelmingly in support of developing the area for the benefit of both the school & the community. 

We will be holding an event on the 10th of September, from 6.45 - 8.30pm, to share the results in more depth & discuss how we can take things forward.  

Knightswood Centre 

Last year, Knightswood Community Centre reached out to GET for support in developing the green space at the side of the old Community Centre. GET coordinated a community survey, a feedback meeting and then a series of meetings and visits to local community gardens and greenspaces. These included LINKES food forest, Kingsway Community Garden and Heart of Scotstoun. A small working group was set up to take the project forward.

The group have been meeting every Thursday, have grown in size and have made excellent progress. They have multiple raised beds, some of which have been adopted by the local ESOL group. Recently, they obtained a raised bed suitable for use by wheelchair users & people with mobility needs. This has been taken on by Victoria Garden Care home for use by residents. If you’re interested in getting involved or finding out more, please contact Gordon (Knightswood Centre development worker) at [email protected].

Yoker Allotment

As part of the FCA project, GET has taken on a half plot at Yoker Allotments. We are in the process of preparing the site to run some “how to grow”  & composting workshops over the next couple of months. More info & booking coming soon. 

A big thank you to the green gym who have given up their time to help us with this process!

Keep in Touch

If you're from West Glasgow and would like to keep in touch with all the brilliant activity Ailee and her Host Organisation, Glasgow Eco Trust are putting on, email [email protected] to request to be added to her mailing list.

Food and Climate Action is a project delivered by Glasgow Community Food Network in partnership with 6 organisations in Glasgow and funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.  Our host organisations are St. Paul's Youth Forum, Glasgow Eco Trust, The Space, Central and West Integration Network and Urban Roots