Emerging Strands

These are some areas of collaboration that UAC is exploring with our partners:

  • Reimagining the Green Belt – watch the videos of our innovative 2023 pilot project in the Bristol/Bath greenbelt funded through Grounding Technologies. Greenbelts / Greybelts & new settlements are hot on the political agenda – but what voices do the urban and rural community have? Our green belts could become peri-urban generators of health, community wealth, low impact settlements and bio-regional food security. Focussing on developing a bioregional and democratic approach, using certain building blocks of agroecological urbanism, planning policy and community visioning processes we want to expand this work across England. Funding needed.
  • Landed Community Kitchens (LCKs) are vital infrastructure for a just, nutritious and resilient food system. They are one of the eight Building Blocks of an Agroecological Urbanism. A Landed Community Kitchen is a social justice-based Kitchen-Farmer coalition linking urban communities to their productive hinterland to end food poverty and build community. Building on an exploratory workshop in Leeds (Feb 2024), we are now working with CAWR /Coventry University, the CSA Network, Real Farming Trust, and Regather (Sheffield) to expand and explore the LCK model across eight northern cities and towns. Funding is secured for two years from September 2024. Thanks to Farming the Future.
  • Pathways for an Agroecological Urbanism.
    UAC has long been inspired by this body of work on Agroecological Urbanism, Permaculture, and the work of the Landworkers Alliance. Now, we have funding to work together for a year (from Oct 2024) to understand better the institutional barriers to upscaling urban and peri-urban agroecology. We’re using the frames / lenses of the Food Zones model and Agroecological Urbanism to assess how the food system work in the city regions of Bristol and Leeds is progressing, what institutional barriers need addressing, and how the barriers might be overcome.
  • Supporting development of Farmstarts – incubator hubs training and mentoring new entrant farmers in peri-urban areas, working with local authorities & partners on the set up stage. Building on foundational work already completed in the north and east midlands. See more under PING 10 here.
  • Allotments and beyond – pathways into local food resilience: from collective allotment governance, allotment CSAs, Public Common Partnerships, and land trusts to safeguard and manage new sites in perpetuity, glut huts, allotment kitchens and more. Building on accumulated experience and dialogues with partners. Funding needed.
  • Urban compost collectives – Networked neighbourhood composting infrastructure transforming urban household and business food waste into biologically complete living soils. We support Bristol Living Soil pro bono. Funding needed to develop further.
  • Tiny Homes for land stewards – a new concept/model for how the problems of affordable housing, land stewardship, food provision and ecological restoration might be tackled together in and around cities: building on the Greenbelt project, Maddy’s involvement with Tiny House Community Bristol, conversations with Bristol Community Land Trust, and lived experiences.
  • Telling a new story (cross cutting theme) – Communications and narrative: good healthy food is everyone’s right, responsibility and pleasure.