Past Projects
Thursday, 03 March 2011
The Children’s Food Festival 2007
The Children's Food Festival 2007, organised by the Northmoor Trust, was fronted by Patrons Raymond Blanc and Sophie Grigson, who gave hands-on demos, inviting children to help them chop, stir, smell and taste.
Overview
The idea for the Children’s Food Festival was developed by Oxford Inspires, the cultural development agency for Oxfordshire. The festival was organised by the Northmoor Trust, in association with the School Food Trust.
The Festival was extremely successful. Visitors and participants commented repeatedly on the ‘great atmosphere’, which was achieved for many reasons, including the street-theatre, the colourful displays and the good-humoured staff. It was notable that the children themselves were extremely receptive to the activities and were fully engaged and attentive to the experiences on offer.
‘The Children's Food Festival was really, really good. I enjoyed stroking the buffalo, planting seeds, making bread and wooden spoon faces. I tried chilli for the first time. It was fun joining in singing with the Cosmic Sausages band.’
Louis, 5 years old, Oxford
‘We all enjoyed the Food Festival and we think you should hold it every year. Our favourite thing was cooking with Raymond Blanc. We all liked the cooking and trying new foods, and especially liked making pasta, and thought we might try making it at home.’
Lizzie (9 years old), Jane (8 years old) and Guy (6 years old)
The Festival was divided into three main areas: the Market Square, the Picnic Green and the Cooking Circle.
The Market Square contained The Farmers’ Market of local produce, the Midcounties Co-operative Tent, the Life Education Classroom and the Bazaar - which included produce from further afield, cookware, books, Ocado and Organix stalls.
The Picnic Green included Bangladeshi, Thai, French, English, vegetarian, Egyptian and Caribbean food. Also here were the Northmoor Trust’s Wild Waste Show and The Wooden Spoon Faces workshop, making wooden spoon faces out of food stuffs.
The Cooking Circle included the Chef’s Cookery Theatre with demonstrations by celebrity chefs, the Belling Kids’ Kitchen and Kitchen Academy offering cooking sessions, the Expo Chef interactive cooking show, the School Food Trust Tent, the Saclà Italian Tent, the Potato Roadshow, six Field to Fork Tents and the Farm.
Assessment against objectives
The stated objectives of the Food Festival were to: -
• To inspire children to cook
• To help children make the links between food and well-being
• To show children how food is produced
• To encourage children to be curious about food from other cultures
Our underlying objectives were to make food fun, and to emphasise the links between healthy food and a healthy environment.
Inspiring children to cook: the celebrity chefs were requested to perform an interactive cooking demonstration to ‘inspire children to cook’. These were very well received and children were delighted to be asked up on stage. The Festival included many tents with participatory cooking activities and all of these were extremely busy throughout the day.
Much of the feedback we have received shows that children have become more involved in cooking in the home, having been inspired by the Festival.
‘I thought it was real fun. I made pesto and bread and tasted olive oil. I planted salad seeds. It made me want to cook a bit more. The puppet show was great.’ Milo, 8 years old
Making the link between food and well-being; all the exhibitors at the Festival were selected on the basis of their reputation as providers of healthy food. The messages put across throughout the festival were that healthy food does not have to be boring – instead it can be a great pleasure.
To show children how food is produced: the Field to Fork tents included: the Dairy Tent, the Bread Tent, the Meat and Fish Tent, the Fruit and Veg Tent, the Rowse Honey Tent and the Smell Tent. Displays in these tents, which included hands-on activities, followed a raw ingredient from its production on the farm to how we eat it.
Food from other cultures: in addition to the multicultural food on offer in the Picnic Green, there was a display of Thai vegetable carving, a halal meat stall, chapati making and a spice display. The pasta and pesto making in the Saclà Italian Tent was one of the busiest activities at the festival and was extremely well organised and well received. Feedback from visitors has included mention of people being inspired to grow their own basil and to start making their own pasta.
Attendance
When planning the event we had anticipated 5,000 visitors over the weekend. These estimates grew to 10,000, and subsequently to between 10,000 and 15,000,as interest in the festival developed.
As the publicity for the Festival grew, we realised that we would need to seek a larger and more accessible site in order to host these numbers - Abingdon Airfield. The move to Abingdon Airfield meant that we lost the link between the Festival and the Northmoor Trust’s own farm, but the benefits of the Airfield’s accessibility and increased capacity, outweighed this concern.
Despite bad weather, competition from the nearby Air Tattoo at Fairford and severe restrictions on road signage, we estimate that at least 15,000 people attended. There were 3,230 cars over the weekend, each carrying between 3-5 occupants. In addition, many people arrived by cycle, coach, bus and on foot.
Our evaluation forms and competition entries show that 68% of visitors came from Oxfordshire and 32% travelled from outside Oxfordshire, from areas including:
Cardiff, Doncaster, Derby, Leicester, Stockport, Peterborough, Isle of Wight, Kent, Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Milton Keynes, Guildford, Hemel Hempstead, Colchester, Sussex, Reading, Suffolk, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Southampton, Bristol, Cambridge, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Swindon, Reading and Slough.
‘Well done for such a wonderful event at the weekend. My 8 year old daughter spent over 4 hours there on Saturday. First thing Sunday morning she was pleading with me to take her back to the Food Festival again for another visit and was really disappointed when I said that we had other things on. While she enjoyed the whole thing, being chosen to be Sophie Grigson’s assistant at the demonstration was definitely a highlight!’
Moira
‘It was fantastic! I just hope it becomes an annual event as I’ve mentioned it to so many people as a great thing to do next summer!’
Helen
