About Us

Since 2019 the Urban Agriculture Consortium (UAC) has been bringing people together to co-create the conditions for urban and peri-urban agroecology to thrive, as part of an integrated, resilient, & just food system for the UK.

Our goal is re-normalising agroecological and local food growing and local food consumption in and around our towns and cities and to continue to push the boundaries through supporting transformative ideas and the relationships to make them happen. 

With two part-time coordinators running the project (Maddy Longhurst & Jeremy Iles) UAC has, with partners and associates across the consortium, been co-designing, testing and delivering a portfolio of complementary support ‘modules’ to help amplify and accelerate the place-based initiatives and ideas that we consider will be the most impactful, systemically, and in terms of human transformation and ecological healing. 

These modules are evolving – this diagram gives a partial snapshot of our current work – UAC coordinators and our guides, associates and place-based partners are at the centre, and the projects we directly support in yellow circles around. This diagram is evolving all the time.

UAC is now seeking next-level funding to continue to co-design, develop, grow, and deliver these modules collaboratively, to make them more widely available, to have the means to support their upscaling where/when there is an opportunity, and to invest in holistic evaluation of our impact (across all members and projects of the consortium).

A note on funding: UAC has been funded since 2020 with grants and contracts from a variety of sources, notably the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Polden Puckham, Necessity and others.  We are currently entering our 5th year (2025) and we are applying for further funds – but we know it’s a tough funding climate, and nothing is certain.  
If you’d like to support us, please get in touch!

UAC is an unconstituted collaboration of partners and associates. UAC continues to be project managed by Green Future Associates CIC, which acts as the accountable body.

Who are we?

Maddy Longhurst – UAC Coordinator (2020 – present). Maddy follows her instincts to work on initiatives and ideas that lie in the fertile margins and serve future generations. This has involved the protection of land and soils, community-led thermal imaging of cold homes, Ecosystem Restoration Design training and the coordination of Tiny House Community Bristol. Sociocracy, Gleaning training for communities, Participatory Video and commoning. She has also worked with Constriuctivist helping to deliver the Regenerative Design Lab.
Maddy joined UAC in 2019 and coordinated it with Jeremy ever since, leading on project development, relationships and delivery.  She has studied Ecosystem Restoration Design with Gaia Education, did a degree in Town and Country Planning, is a Community Organiser (level 3), believes in the healing power of nature for all types of human dis-ease, and finds her joy in the sea, the sky, sit-spots, fires, singing, brambling, unexplainable community wisdom, her daughter Martha, Rilke and Ursula K Le Guin.

Jeremy Iles, UAC founder. “Doing something useful” has involved a long environmental career – cycle campaigner Friends of the Earth (1983), Director of the London Wildlife Trust 1984-90), Country Manager in Bangladesh and Eritrea VSO (1991-93), National Cycle Network Regional Manager (1994-2000). As CEO of the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens (2000-16) he developed many impactful collaborations, notably The Allotments Regeneration Initiative, the £57m Local Food Consortium, Community Land Advisory Service, and the Growing Together partnership. Jeremy started exploring opportunities for upscaling urban agriculture in 2017, which led to the emergence of the Urban Agriculture Consortium in 2019. He is also part of The Oral History of Environment Movement project with Royal Holloway, University of London, which launched in autumn 2022. https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/geography/oral-history-of-the-environmental-movement-project/
Bristol-based Jeremy has an allotment, sings with The Island Folk, and plays guitar & mandola with the All@Sea ceilidh band. Jeremy is a qualified Yachtmaster and dinghy instructor. ​

UAC’s brilliant associates come together to add insight and value to our work and enable communities and groups across the UK to progress their aspirations. Our heartfelt thanks to:
Our east midlands / eastern region community enablers team: Bethan McIlroy, (Nottingham), Bex Elston (Nottinghamshire), Laura Stratford (Lincolnshire), Lauren Kendrick (Peterborough), & Sabine Virani (Norwich).
Our Core Oversight (Steering) Group – Andy Goldring (Permaculture Association), Suzy Russel (Community Supported Agriculture Network), Nick Weir (Open Food Network), Alison Sheffield (Social Farms and Gardens), Gary Mitchell (Social Farms and Gardens Cymru), Elizabeth Westaway, (independent).
Our additional research partners: Chiara Tornaghi (Centre for Agroecology Water & Resilience at Coventry Uni), Rebecca (Bee) Laughton at the Landworkers Alliance, Jade Bashford (Real Farming Trust) and Gareth Roberts (Regather, Sheffield).

Our thanks also go to: Dan Evans (Urban Cultivate / Cranfield), Janie Bickersteth (Good Food Oxford), Anna Clayton, Ellen Pearce and Rachel Marshall (LESS, Lancaster), Joolz Thompson (iFarm), Miriam Turley, Patricia Wallace and Conor O’Kane (SF&G Northern Ireland) and many more…