Event Details

Every Tuesday 9.30 – 10.30am, we invite a Lancaster academic to brief us on their research. The format is a 20 minute talk followed by discussion.

Building social futures together: Who is the ‘We’ in FoodFutures?

Dr Rachel Marshall & Dr Rebecca Whittle

Community self-organising around some of the critical issues facing our society (including climate change, food poverty, transport) is growing. This is partially in response to the slow pace of action from central government structures but also due to the desire to create responses and systems in which communities have greater agency, voice and resilience. The power and value of self-organising communities is recognised within both academic literature, and increasingly by national and local government. As community organisations become involved in working in partnership with larger organisations or government, or even just themselves grow, a number of interesting questions are coming up:

- How do self-organising communities or partnerships maintain a sense of ‘we’ as they grow, evolve and propagate further self-organising?

- How do these communities work effectively with large institutions whilst maintaining their sense of identity and attributes? What can institutions learn from self-organising communities and vice-versa?

- Can digital technology be leveraged to extend the sense of ‘we’ further into our local communities?

In this briefing I will present these questions from the perspective of our local food partnership ‘FoodFutures’ as we look to develop a ten year food strategy for the region and continue to grow a community around healthy, fair and resilient food in North Lancashire.