Celebrating Success: Birmingham’s Food Trails Project Dissemination Dinner

Circle-rotated-2

Showcasing four years of innovation and impact in urban food systems

On Monday 9th September Birmingham City Council hosted a dissemination dinner for the Food Trails project for our Birmingham partners and stakeholders. 

This dinner was a celebration of the 4-year Horizon 2020 Food Trails project and a showcase of all the work and results from our 3 pilot projects: “Full of Beans”, “High Rise Harvest” and “Who Said This Is Rubbish”. The project was led by European and International Affairs and the Public Health Food System Team at Birmingham City Council.

The plant-based dinner was hosted by the Dolphin Women’s centre in Ward End Park and catered by Change Kitchen CIC, a key local partner in the project. 

Cllr Nicky Brennan, Interim Cabinet member for Health and Social Care and Cabinet Member for Social Justice, Community Safety and Equalities was in attendance along with Dr Justin Varney, Director of Public Health and Lloyd Broad, Head of European and International Affairs.

Guest organisations included:

  • Companions for Hope
  • Eat Make Play
  • ERCO
  • FareShare Midlands
  • Incredible Surplus
  • Slow Food Birmingham and Slow Food UK
  • The Active Wellbeing Society

Key highlights from the project:

  • We have saved 30189.05kg of greenhouse gases and diverted 43127.63kg of waste from landfill through the “Who Said This is Rubbish” pilot.
  • Beans and pulses has now been embedded into the PH Food System Team provision and the team continue to champion nutrition for children.
  • We now have a feasibility study and business plan that can be transferred to any urban setting to create an urban farm/ rooftop garden. This includes a lottery funded project at the Dolphin Centre which is currently creating a roof top growing facility.
  • Learnings from this project is helping to inform the city’s waste management approach in the implementation of the Environment Act 2021 that seeks to separate food waste from general waste across all UK cities.