Sessions and Activities

We’ve outlined different sessions and activities that organisations and groups can use below.

1. Dragon’s Den – design a food project

Minimum 30 minutes plus 5 minutes presentation time per group

This is a session that can be run by any group of people, organisation, or service provider. It aims to get people thinking about potential new innovations that we could introduce in the borough, in order to build a better local food system.

Facilitator notes: the ideas that this session generates can be brought to reality through Make It Happen grants programme we have available through Cripplegate and Islington Giving, where any group of residents, including young people, or organisations can apply for up to £500 to run their own projects. If any of your participants are interested in taking their ideas further, you can encourage them to apply, and we are happy to support them to do so – just email us at hello@islingtonfoodpartnership.org.uk.

Tell the participants that we are going to do a Dragon’s Den competition to come up with innovative projects to help build a better local food system in Islington. Ask the participants to split into groups of around 4 people.

Say they are going to have 20 minutes (we recommend a minimum of 20 minutes, but you can add longer if you have more time) and £5,000 to design a project together, and then 5 minutes to pitch it back to the group. The project should have a goal that focuses on one or more of the themes in the Islington Food Strategy.

1. Healthy affordable food for all – for example a local food service to tackle food poverty in a new way, or encourage more people to make healthy choices
2. Sustainable local food economy – for example designing a small new food related business, or a way to encourage more people to use local sustainable businesses
3. Climate and nature emergency – for example a project to reduce food waste, or grow more food locally
4. People-powered change – for example a borough campaign to inspire people to take action around food, or educate more people on the key issues

The group may want to start by talking through which of the above areas feels most important to them, to narrow down their options.

Ask a member of each group to join the Dragon panel, and the facilitator may wish to join the panel to give feedback too.

If suitable, tell participants that Cripplegate and Islington Giving do currently have grants available for people to receive funding for their ideas, if they would be interesting in taking it further. They can reach out to Islington Food Partnership for support with this – their email is hello@islingtonfoodpartnership.org.uk.

Note: you may wish to adjust the amount based on the participants you have. Our fund offers grants up to £500, so you could pick any amount in that range, although we would recommend smaller amounts for young people and newly formed groups.

Session end
Go around the group and ask their reflections on the session. Ask everyone to commit to one change they will make to support this work – for example it could be to eat less meat, to try and buy more sustainably, to encourage their workplace to buy from local suppliers, etc.

Tell people they can find more information at islingtonfoodpartnership.org.uk, email us at hello@islingtonfoodpartnership.org.uk, and follow us on Twitter @IslingtonFoodP.