Food Partnership marks 20 years with a conference on 25 November

Brighton & Hove Food Partnership^1,3 is holding a conference for its 20th anniversary on Wednesday 25 November, from 1.30pm to 5.15pm at the University of Brighton’s Edward Street building. The partnership is asking those who can to pay £20, which goes to its Community Kitchen’s Recipe for Life campaign, and there are free tickets for anyone who would be put off by the cost.

The partnership was formally set up in 2006, the year the city launched its first food strategy. Its idea was to bring health, local government, business and community groups together to think about food as a whole system. The partnership said the conference would celebrate what it has helped build, “but more importantly to look forward”.

The opening session starts with a short look back by Vic Borrill, the partnership’s chief executive. Stuart Gillespie, author of Food Fight and a fellow of the International Food Policy Research Institute, will talk about why the global food system needs to change. A Food Futures panel will then be asked what they would like to have changed by the time the partnership is 30. Lucy Heyderman, citizen engagement manager at The Food Foundation, will talk about national work that involves people with lived experience in campaigning.

After that come two rounds of parallel sessions. From the Downs to our Plates, at 3.10pm, is about building a local food economy that works for nature and farmers. It has ecologist Graeme Lyons, farmer Ben Carr and Councillor Tim Rowkins, cabinet member for environment and net zero. Running at the same time, Beyond the Food Bank uses the latest Food Support Network survey to look at a more preventative approach to food insecurity.

From 4.15pm there is a session from the Food Use Places project on using food better and cutting waste, or a community garden board game from a research project on “serious games” and food systems. All afternoon, an exhibition called Food in Action has photographs, archive material and stories from the partnership’s 20 years.

You can come for part or all of it, and you pick your sessions when you book. The board game and the Beyond the Food Bank workshop have limited places.