rce north east project

Grow Your Own Five

The aim of the Grow Your Own Five project is to learn about growing food and issues concerning locally sourced produce. The programme is based at Tanfield school. In April 2009 over a thousand young people from the Tanfield ‘family of schools’ and members of the local communities there participated in the programme. So now there are a thousand pairs of eyes watching the development of their personal food gardens on a thousand window sills across North County Durham. Coordinated by Vivienne Dawson of Landscape and Art and Design Services the project is working in partnership with these schools, the County Durham Primary Care Trust, Beamish Museum, OPAL North East and Newcastle University.

The programme involves working with an inter-generational programme inviting older people with expertise in growing their own food. This is intended as a means of creating better understanding for our young people of the following themes and issues:

What are ‘food miles?’ and how does growing food locally matter?
What does importing food across continents mean for the environment?
What does buying cash crops mean to farmers in poor places abroad?
How can we work with the understanding of older people who have considerable experience in growing their own food?
In the face of global economic uncertainties what does ‘austerity’ mean?
How can we learn about sharing resources and goods locally?

The project is a means of exploring our wider vision for a Tanfield bubble Eco Centre – a classroom which we intend to share as a community facility to explore wider issues relating to food production and use and related issues.

The programme will develop ways in which the knowledge which many of our senior citizens about food production and use can be shared with younger people.
We see this as a means of including older people in the redevelopment of our communities.
Our participation in traditional ‘Leek Shows’ will give an indication of our commitment to the programme to a wide audience.

Produce will be distributed locally at Harvest Festival with senior citizens The group will present their vegetables at one or more of the region’s traditional ‘Leek Shows’ We will produce web material. Grow Your Own Five will eventually involve a great number of schools across County Durham, and hopefully further afield. We are working internationally with other organisations to develop this project – with the Prairie Learning Centre in Saskatchewan, for example, and the Advancing Canadian Agriculture and Agri-Food Saskatchewan (ACAAFS) programme

Why we are setting out to grow five

The UK Dept of Health proposes the need to eat a variety of five fruit and vegetables to maintain bodily health.
Many of our young people are unaware of where food comes from - this is an opportunity to learn.
It gives us a chance to engage with the natural world.
It gets us out of doors.
It gives us a chance to discuss this 'growing interest' with young people elsewhere.
We have established a growing group at Tanfield in County Durham.
We are interested in waste management - how much of what our school uses daily is wasted - what about packaging?
We are interested in 'food miles' - does food really have to be transported across great distances? Some of the food we use is grown in Africa for instance.

The work on-going meets many of the criteria of the Children and Young People's Services Social Agenda.

Also - traditionally people grew their own food here to supplement their diets, and many of our older people still do. So we see the potential of engaging with allotment gardeners as a form of intergenerational knowledge transfer. We are developing an oral testimony programme about mining communities alongside the G5, and this involves the local Beamish Museum. We also are interested in our Saskatchewan contacts’ work with 'indigenous knowledge' with traditions from First Nation people. We too would like to find out more about the lore and legend of plants. Traditionally vegetables and flowers were displayed annually at harvest time in leek shows - we are interested in reviving this custom amongst our young people, and we are planning a vegetable show inviting all the participants from the Tanfield hub of schools and communities for September.

We will be working with the OPAL project with the community scientist at Newcastle University's Moorbank Botanic Gardens.

Useful links

Moorbank Botanic Gardens
Newcastle University
Beamish Museum
County Durham Primary Care Trust