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Charity
Bossy by nature, I guess I’ve always wanted to get stuck in and improve matters! And because for years I ran my own business, and so could take time out to sit on charity boards etc, I have involved myself with a lot of organisations, mostly to do with food or education: The ones that still interest me most are:
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| Slow Food UK |
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When Cat Gazzolli, the recently appointed, super-powered, American-Italian CEO of Slow Food, came to see me I was reluctant to get involved. I thought the world of Carlo Petrini the Italian founder of Slow Food International. I thought the Slow Food campaigns to save rare breeds, forgotten varieties of fruit and veg, to promote good (ie delicious) clean (ie safe and healthy) fair (ie produced without harm to humans, animals and the planet) were brilliant and effective. I also admired what Slow Food had done, not just in Italy, but in India, in the US, in Australia. But I confess to having got the impression that Slow Food in the UK was a bit too slow.
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But no-one resists Cat, and I am now deeply involved and delighted that in 18 months we have set up four education projects which between them provide something for everyone: Slow Food Baby is a program to help Mums feed their babies really well, The Taste Experience is an educational game involving all the senses in identifying food. This goes to schools, museums, food festivals and the like and, though aimed at children, it is a huge success with grown ups too. Slow Food Campus, recently launched, can’t keep up with the demand from Universities. It helps students form groups to improve the food offer on campus, to teach each other to cook, to eat together and save money. And finally, dear to my heart Slow Food Wisdom is about the older generation passing on recipes, skills and techniques to the younger ones. Once children learnt to cook at Mum’s apron strings, but Mum’s apron strings are out to work and probably never learnt to cook themselves. But there is a treasure trove of know-how in the over sixties.
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TTA Plymouth Aug 2010 Slow FoodUK Team
Picture taken by Rhonda Smith
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All inspiring stuff, and fun for me. I belong to the Cotswold Group, and we are fortunate to have the remarkable Juliet Harbutt, “the cheese lady” as our Chair, and the astonishing Dayelsford Farm shop as supporters.
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The School Food Trust
See under School Meals for more info. It is hugely important I think – getting children to like food that’s good for them. But the truth is it is going to take a while: After all it has taken 45 years to degrade the school meals system from one where caterers saw their job as looking after children’s health and welfare, to the one we had in 2006 where they are expected to make money out of selling junk to children – either money for the outsourced catering company, or money for the school. But, largely due to the School Food Trust, Jamie Oliver and Government intervention we are steadily get back to a culture of good wholesome food being the right of every child, I’d like to see us go further, so that good food is seen as part of education. We should be teaching and encouraging children to like what is good for them in the same way as we teach them to like literature, maths or football.
I’m endlessly banging on about school food, but since at seventy I have finally resigned from the School Food Trust, maybe I will do it less. But it’s unlikely! If you are interested, click here for some of my speeches or articles, and have a look at the school food trust website. They have done and are doing do wonderful things, including setting up 5,000 Let’s Get Cooking after-school clubs. The website is www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk
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Focus on Food
Focus on Food, is a charity which I initiated when I was Chair of the Royal Society of Arts (the RSA) to teach children to cook in schools. Today the charity has four pantechnicon buses that travel the country teaching classes of children in schools, training teachers, and (in the holidays) cooking with families in the community. Each bus expands to enable 20 students to cook at wonderfully equipped work stations with stoves, sinks and etc – you would never know you were in a bus!
Focus on Food is one of the partners of the Food for Life program, led by the Soil Association, which has just won £18 million from the Big Lottery to teach children to cook, grow, and understand food.
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The Hoxton Apprentice
The Hoxton Apprentice is a not for profit restaurant, a bit like Jamie’s Fifteen, that I helped set up for the charity Training for Life which works to get really disadvantaged people off the streets and into work. It’s in Hoxton Square in Hackney, London, and takes 15 young people every six months, most of them convinced they will never achieve anything with a background of homelessness, drugs, prison or just unable to engage in school or training.
The restaurant does a terrific job, with 75% of the trainees able to get, and more importantly, keep jobs. Most of them want to be chefs, but some become waiters, barmen or coffee-shop staff.
A second Apprentice restaurant, in Dartmouth, opened in 2008 and there are several more in development.
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From top right: The Hoxton lunchtime stack; The Restaurant in a former Pirmary School; Me with a class of apprentices; Chilli Prawns |
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The Great British Kitchen
The Great British Kitchen is an enterprise dreamt up by The British Food Trust, which I chaired for many year. The aim is to promote good food in all its forms: production, buying, cooking, eating, education, the lot. We set out to build a National Centre for the Culinary Arts with a food museum, library and archive, catering college, hotel, farmers’ market, chef’s demonstration kitchens, TV studio, food-related retail, et al.. We never quite achieved it, but bits of the grand plan are happening in various parts of the country, and we have achieved a new practical exam-based qualification for chefs, the Applied Ability Award, which is currently being piloted all over the country.
The website is www.greatbritishkitchen.co.uk
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| The late Lord Patrick Lichfield, the famous photographer (seen here between me and TV chef Sophie Grigson). Patrick was an active Trustee and supporter of the Great British Kitchen. |
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3E's
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3E’s (for “Education, Education, Education” – or for Enterprise, Energy and Excellence if I’m talking to the Tories) was set up as a not-for profit enerprise, and was a subsidiary of Kingshurst City Technology College, (now an Academy) one of the best comprehensives in the country. I was on the board of the CTC and we decided, since Kingshurst had done so well, to go into turning round failing state schools. I chaired the fledgling company and our first contract was to take over and manage a state school -- the disastrous Kings Manor School in Guildford, which had been in special measures (ie was officially a failing school) with only a handful of children getting even average results at GCSE, and had no sixth form at all. Today, ten years later it has 85% of childen getting 5 A* to C grades at GCSE, and is a very good school indeed. It has a thriving sixth form and is a model of school improvement. 3 E’s went on to win the contract for the government’s first flagship City Academy, the Bexley Business Academy, and has since won contracts to design and manage a dozen academies and schools. 3E’s is now part of Faber Maunsell plc., Valerie Bragg
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Ashridge Business School
I confess that when the late Sir Michael Angus, then Chairman of Unilever, Whitbread and Boots (who was also the Chairman of Ashridge) asked me to join his Board I was so flattered I said Yes without a thought that as my only qualification was the 25 yards swimming certificate, I perhaps wasn’t the most suitable candidate. However, I love the place and I ended up succeeding Michael as Chair. What I like about Ashridge is that they relate all their management education to the real world, with a proper mix of the practical and the academic. When I resigned after 12 years they gave me, instead of an academic tome, a set of French dinner knives! Very nice indeed.
The website is www.ashridge.org.uk
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Ashridge Business School
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Forum for the Future
I’m a huge admirer of Jonathan Porritt and Sara Parkin who started this, the first organisation devoted to helping business go green. Having set up and run Friends of the Earth, Jonathan decided in the late nineties that the world had got the message – we were polluting the earth. So he decided to help find solutions. I chaired Forum for several years, and though I resigned in order to make more time for writing and to do the School Food Trust job, I still follow their tracks with fascination
The website is www.forumforthefuture.org.uk
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Jonathan Porritt and Sara Parkin
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