LOTTERY GIVES GASTRO-GRANT: TWENTY MILLION POUNDS OF FUNDING WILL GET KIDS COOKING
The nation’s culinary future is looking bright today as Let’s Get Cooking, a network of cookery clubs for young people and parents, received £20 million from the Big Lottery Fund1 today. The money will fund a potential 5,000 clubs, to be set up from Autumn 2007. The monumental project will ensure that the next generation of children do not suffer from the same lack of cookery skills that is currently contributing to the UK’s emerging obesity crisis.
The scheme is lead by the School Food Trust2 in partnership with a range of well-known organisations with experience in food skills and campaigning including Prince’s Trust3, Business in the Community4, Magic Outcomes5 and the Improvement Foundation6, who will each spearhead projects aimed at key target audiences including teenagers, schools and communities in areas of high deprivation, and encouraging sustainable support from businesses. The British Nutrition Foundation7 and the Royal Society for Health8 are also involved in an advisory capacity.
Involving the wider community and outside school hours, the aim of Let’s Get Cooking is to establish a national network of clubs to give children and non-cooking parents of all ages the skills and confidence to cook nutritious and tasty meals from scratch.
Let’s Get Cooking is already running 21 successful pilot clubs, launched in January this year in Lancashire, Plymouth and Somerset9. The project is backed by some of the UK’s most successful chefs including Richard Corrigan, Galton Blackiston and Marguerite Patten, the grand dame of British cookery.
Prue Leith, chair of the School Food Trust, lead partner for Let’s Get Cooking, said:
“It’s our mission to make cooking ‘cool’ and re-establish cooking skills as something which are important, valuable, and let’s not forget, fun. Let’s Get Cooking will revive cooking on a national scale, by helping people to learn new cooking skills and encouraging those parents who have lost the motivation to see how important this is to their families health and behaviour. The Big Lottery Fund’s vital £20 million investment will help ensure cooking is recognised as an essential life skill.”
Brian Turner CBE, head chef at Brian Turner Mayfair at The Millennium Hotel and a regular on Ready Steady Cook, welcomed the new funding:
“The number of stories about overweight and unhealthy children that have appeared in newspapers during the last few months show how badly this type of scheme is needed. I hope parents and kids get into the spirit of it and really make the most of this opportunity. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in 10 - 15 years time, we had a generation of amateur chefs cooking great tasting, healthy food with their families.”
Let’s Get Cooking will organise a wide variety of initiatives and competitions, with the backing of celebrities, to further motivate parents and young people to get involved in the clubs.
Schools and parents interested in setting up a Let’s Get Cooking club should call 0800 089 5001, or log onto www.letsgetcooking.org.uk
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For further information please contact Luke Muir/Rebecca Irani at Geronimo Communications on 0207 299 8769/8775 or 07841 718692, or Wendy Carter at the School Food Trust on 07917 266570.
Notes to editors
1. The Well-being programme provides funding to support the development of healthier lifestyles and to improve well-being. The programme will focus on three strands: mental health – to help people and communities to improve mental well-being; physical activity – to help people to become more physically active in their daily lives and in their communities; and healthy eating - for children, parents and the wider community to eat more healthily. To deliver this programme, the Big Lottery fund will appoint a number of organisations that will each deliver a portfolio of projects in England.
The Big Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours which together with other Lottery distributors means that across the UK most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.
The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004.
Full details of the work of the Big Lottery Fund, its programmes and awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
2. The School Food Trust will be setting up a network of 5,000 after school Let’s Get Cooking clubs. The School Food Trust is a non-departmental public body established by the DfES (now Dept for Children, Schools and Families) with £15m of funding in September 2005. Its remit is to transform school food and food skills, and promote the education and health of children and young people by improving the quality of food supplied and consumed in school. www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk
3. Healthy Eating through xl, led by The Prince’s Trust, will engage 7,320 young people on a 2-year Healthy Eating programme within their existing xl clubs over 5 years. As well as directly benefiting these young people, the Prince’s Trust will also be developing materials for Let’s Get Cooking clubs in secondary schools based on their experience with the XL clubs.
The Prince’s Trust xl clubs are a team-based programme of personal development based in schools
for pupils 'at risk' of truanting and under-achievement. Clubs aim to improve attendance, self-esteem, motivation and social skills.
Youth charity The Prince’s Trust helps change young lives in the UK. It gives practical and financial support, developing skills such as confidence and motivation. It works with 14-30 year olds who have struggled at school, have been in care, are long-term unemployed or have been in trouble with the law. Programmes lead to young people getting back into work, education and training, as well as improving attitudes towards health and lifestyle. www.princes-trust.org.uk
4. Engaging Companies, led by Business in the Community, will bring in 100 cross-sector companies and 18,000 of their staff to create employee volunteering opportunities to support the Let’s Get Cooking clubs.
Business in the Community is a unique movement of over 700 of the UK’s top companies committed to improving their positive impact on society. www.bitc.org.uk
5. Supporting School Leadership, led by Magic Outcomes, will facilitate school food vision development programmes in 20 primary schools from some of the most deprived areas in London and Yorkshire.
Magic Outcomes is an innovative social enterprise which provides schools-based training and development programmes to organisations which seek to pursue their commercial objectives alongside socially responsible outcomes. www.magicoutcomes.com
6. Everyone’s Cooking, led by the Improvement Foundation, will support cooking clubs in up to 25 disadvantaged communities, identified through the indices of multiple deprivation.
The Improvement Foundation is a specialised improvement team which works with both professionals and community members to apply quality improvement methods to their own local priorities. www.improvementfoundation.org
7. British Nutrition Foundation has been involved in an advisory capacity. The British Nutrition Foundation is a scientific and educational charity which promotes the wellbeing of society through the impartial interpretation and effective dissemination of evidence-based nutritional knowledge and advice. www.nutrition.org.uk
8. The Royal Society of Health conducted a national consultation to ascertain the level of demand and support for a national cooking club programme as well as undertaking an advisory role to the Let’s Get Cooking programme.
The consultation showed an overwhelming majority of respondents strongly welcomed the proposed national programme of cooking clubs. A staggering 99% of all respondents stated there was a need for a cooking skills programme and nearly 90% of respondents were interested in getting involved. To view the executive summary and full report please visit Let’s Get Cooking Consultation
The Royal Society for the Promotion of Health is one of the largest and longest-established public health organisations in the UK. We were founded in 1876 to promote joined up thinking between health professionals and we are a networking organisation that cuts across traditional professional boundaries.
Members are drawn from medicine, nursing, education, environmental health, engineering and architecture including public health doctors, health promotion specialists, pharmacists, dentists, nutritionists, academics, teachers, caterers, health & safety specialists and many others. www.rsph.org
9. There are 21 pilot Let’s Get Cooking clubs who are already running successful after school cooking clubs based in regional clusters in Plymouth, Chard in Somerset and around Lancashire. These pilots will help to shape the national model and detailed case studies are available on request. Representatives from pilot clubs are available for interview. Please contact Wendy Carter on 07917 266570.
• Ormskirk Secondary School in West Lancashire holds the Let’s Get Cooking club every Tuesday. The club is open to everyone but children have been chosen who will particularly benefit from developing this life skill. A parent is coming in to teach children about Thai cooking and other club activities include making and selling fruit smoothies to staff, making a strawberry tea for local elderly people and cooking a variety of recipes during club time including pasta, fruit muffins, Caribbean fruit salad, couscous salad and barbeque food.
• Marsden Community Primary School in Nelson, near Burnley in Lancashire has set up a Let’s Get Cooking club and also now runs cooking activities at the after school ‘Fathers and Kids Together’ club. Although the fathers were initially reluctant to learn to cook, this is now one of their most popular sessions and the Let’s Get Cooking club is oversubscribed. Children attend for 10 weeks learning to cook recipes including smoothies, sandwiches, chicken pitta pockets, mini quiches, scone pizzas, burgers, banana cakes and baked potatoes. On the 10th session they each invite a member of their family and a staff member to attend a celebration where they all cook and eat together. The sessions have been planned to fit in around attending mosque as the majority of pupils are Muslim.
• Coombe Dean Secondary School in Plymouth had a huge response to Let’s Get Cooking and the club has also taken an active role in events within the school, making smoothies, lemonade and chicken kebabs for the prospective parents’ Open Evening. The club is run by the catering manager, a parent and the Headteacher’s PA. The French Dept had a French cheese and wine stall and the club has also run a stall at a fun day run jointly with the local church. They have also held an International Day preparing food on different themes for example Fairtrade, India or France.
• Old Priory Junior School in Plymouth has nearly the entire school wanting to take part – that’s 240 pupils! Due to popular demand, Old Priory run a Let’s Get Cooking club every half term so that every child will get the chance to take part. Each week for four weeks children make picnic recipes and on the 5th week they invite family members who prepare and eat the picnic together. After the picnics so many parents requested the recipes to make at home that the club is putting together a recipe book. Many parents have donated kitchen equipment for the club to use.
• Buckland St Mary Church of England School near Chard in Somerset have a Let’s Get Cooking club run by parents. They have made smoothies in a local shop serving 750 people, made cakes and scones for a local elderly people’s community group, hosted a special dinner for invited guests and plan to serve ‘African Smoothies’ (carrot, orange and lemon juice) during African Week. All the children have cooking diaries which they stick recipes in. So far they’ve made smoothies, dip, salsa, tuna bake, cakes, macaroni cheese, salsa, fruit cocktail and puddings.
