Eastbourne and Lewes District Food Partnerships in the running for national award

Do you run a sustainable food business, community project, local farm or allotment in Lewes District or Eastbourne? Are you a champion of healthy, locally produced food? Eastbourne and Lewes District Food Partnerships are hoping that their efforts to develop a place based approach to food security will be recognised by a Sustainable Food Places Bronze Award, and would love to include you.

Sustainable Food Places is a network of cross-sector partnerships that are using food as a vehicle to drive positive change. The network helps people and places to share challenges, explore practical solutions and develop best practice in all aspects of healthy and sustainable food.

Their awards are open to any place – be it a city, town, borough or district – which is a member of the network. The awards programme recognises and celebrates the success of places across the UK who take a holistic and systems approach to sustainable and healthy food.

Eastbourne and Lewes District have both established successful food partnerships, which bring together a diverse range of groups, organisations and individuals working across the food sector. In Lewes District, partners include Lewes Football Club, Incredible Edible in Seaford, Ringmer Community Orchard and The Havens Food Coop in Denton. Eastbourne’s partners include Our Neighbourhood’s Community Kitchen at Leaf Hall, Gather Community Garden and award-winning JCS Meats and Provisions.

Stef Lake, chair of Lewes District Food Partnership, said: “There is so much fantastic work happening across Lewes District to ensure that local people have access to locally grown, sustainably produced and (most importantly!) delicious and nutritious food. We have worked with local farms and food businesses such as Lovebrook in Kingston, which is an incredible space in the heart of the South Downs, which includes a regenerative farm and forest garden, therapeutic wellbeing days and a farm shop. This is exactly the sort of thing we want our Bronze award application to celebrate.”

Nancy Wilson, Eastbourne Food Partnership coordinator said, “We are delighted at this opportunity to celebrate Good Food across Eastbourne. From Rooted Community Food, a project using their single allotment plot to grow 1 tonne of cost-free organic produce for community food projects, to the increasing number of local restaurants prioritising the wonderful produce available in Sussex such as the newly opened Light restaurant at the Towner gallery, we are seeing a town-wide commitment to making great food available to local people. This Bronze award application is a great opportunity to bring together the Good Food stories of our town to build momentum towards better food futures for all in Eastbourne”

If you would like to be included in the awards application contact Nancy (Eastbourne) or Stef (Lewes District) by emailing [email protected]  or [email protected]