Growing area created with help from Community Payback Team

Nornir’s pioneering pathways to employment and food security project is empowering people on probation to become essential workers in Greater Manchester’s food economy. Through community growing spaces and partnerships with affordable food retailers, Nornir is creating sustainable solutions to food poverty while opening up routes back into work for ex-offenders.

See the link below for more details: 

https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/what-we-do/economy/foundational-economy-innovation-fund/how-nornir-is-reshaping-food-support-and-rehabilitation-in-greater-manchester/

Oyster mushrooms growing

In partnership with Fungall CIC we have been pushing ahead with the growing of mushrooms and then using them in cooking as a substitute for cheap imported and unhealthy meat.

This has been helped by the Community Payback teams helping to construct the growing containers and kitting out the insides. The first harvests of mushrooms have been made and some of this has been used in community cooking. But, similar to the food grown in the community garden. There has been a big demand for the mushrooms from the guys working on the Community Payback Scheme - many of whom are in food poverty themselves and so beneficiaries of the project.

Donating the produce to the guys who are actually growing it seems like such a powerful and inclusive step forward.

We have been looking into trying to make the process more formal, for example certification for growing mushrooms. At the moment we suspect the informal approach the supervisors have adopted will be just as effective, if not more so.

What was also impressive is that the guys were knocked out about how they could do it themselves 'better and cheaper than KFC' one of them suggested.  We feel that this is “empowerment in action” and although unexpected needs to be emphasised as a really positive outcome. It’s something we will certainly want to develop more in the future.

Locally grown food

We have continued to develop and support the growing of food by local organisations. The growing at Marple supported by the Community Payback team is now fully sustainable and producing ready meals on a small scale for food poverty projects. Therefore, we have moved on to develop the work further at Forever Fields.  However, the plan to grow local food and use it to cook ready meals for food poverty projects has been modified because of an unexpected demand for the produce from an unexpected source.

As the food has grown throughout the summer we have been working more with the guys working on the gardens from the Community Payback schemes, many of whom are in food poverty themselves. We have encouraged them to take produce home at the end of the day’s activity and to prepare their own nutritious ready meals for themselves at home. We have regular queues outside the poly tunnel and container for free tomatoes and mushrooms.

This has also been enhanced by showing the guys how to prepare and cook the food at their own homes. We have even had one of the CP placements boasting about making a “new”recipe he invented at home using the garden produce.  

We have been really pleased that the Placements clearly understood and learned about good food during their time on cp with us and how they can make their own much better (and cheaper) food than the “shit” they normally eat.

So we now have a new plan in place and that is to use good local grown food to create a menu that will appeal to lots of people. Vegan Fried Chicken and Chips, Vegan Jerk Fried Chicken etc. This will be seasoned and battered strips of oyster mushroom fried in an air fryer - 'strips, chips and peas' as one of the group called it.

Watch this space!

Photo of the tables ready for the warm hub afternoon

We have continued to develop the work we started with ready meals production being cooked by volunteers (including asylum seekers) and CP placements.

We realised that there was an existing warm hub at Chorlton Central Church. The Warm Hub cooked meals for people in food poverty on a Thursday afternoon. In order to maintain this valuable activity we have:

a)      Added our cooking sessions to the provision so that it can become more sustainable. Our chef is cooking up to 40 for ready meals that have been donated to the homeless.

b)      Food is then prepared for the warm hub which attracts up to 40 adults. This has been so successful that the adults have started to bring their children and we can have up to 20 children at each session.

c)      In order to make the sessions more sustainable we have also set in place food collections from Fairshare Manchester. The food is collected each week for a mall fee and this has massively reduced the costs of running the warm hub and ready meals.

d)      There is a break over the summer but when cooking starts again in September we are planning a separate activity for the children as a craft club with food on a Thursday. Also moving the adults warm hub and ready meal production to Wednesday.

Because there will be no children at the Wednesday warm hub we can once again start to use CP placements in the kitchen

Community Payback Pathways to Healthy Eating and Food Security

When we started out on this project, we had the relatively modest ambition of enlisting people on probation subject to an Unpaid Work Requirement of a Community Order (Community Payback) to produce healthy ready meals for community-run pantries as a way of paying back to the local communities against whom they had offended

What we didn’t realise at the time,  was the significance of working with Community Payback to do this and its  implications for strengthening community power in the foundational economy, not only of food, but also in the wider foundational economy of health, social care and community safety.

Community Payback strengthening the foundational economy

The foundational economy is that sector of the economy which supplies the everyday but essential goods and services that make life worth living in local communities and ensure their effective functioning. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) Foundational Economy Innovation Fund pointed out to us that what we were doing was not only producing healthy ready meals for donation to  community-run pantries, but it was also strengthening  the foundational economy in food by opening up access to affordable healthy food for everyone irrespective of their income level.

What’s more, GMCA  pointed out that this also has a knock-on effect  on strengthening other sectors of the foundational economy - using the supply of food  to improve people’s health through an improved diet and to improve social care through community pantry-run meals on wheels services for example.

At the same time  working with Community Payback to do this also strengthens the Community Safety  sector of the foundational economy, using  food supplied by people on Community Payback to help reduce their reoffending and pay back for previous offending, making life worth living in those communities against whom they have offended and ensuring they function more effectively.

Community Payback catalysing  community power in the foundational economy

As a result of these unforeseen implications of our project GMCA invited us to apply for funding to further develop and build on this model of Community Payback strengthening the wider foundational economy by supplying healthy affordable food to community-run  pantries.

But this was not the only unforeseen implication of our project. The National Lottery who fund it, have recently committed to putting community power at the heart of their funding in England from 2026. By community power they mean local communities being able to increase their agency, power and control over the foundational economy in the places they live – power and control over the  essential goods and services they use and the decisions that affect their lives.

Our project does just that. It uses Community Payback to enable community-run pantries to increase their power and control, not only over their food supply, but also over their health, social care and community safety. Our project doesn’t just use Community Payback to supply  healthy meals to community-run pantries. It  makes community power a reality in those pantries. It catalyses community power in the foundational economy and so has significant long term implications for putting community power at the heart of Lottery funding in England from 2026.