Higher Education Funding Council for England

Hungry For Change

Hungry for Change project gets students thinking about the ethical and environmental impact of the food that they are eating.

Through a basic reeducation of how easy it can be to grow your own food, challenging why we make certain food choices, and deconstructing our own cultural assumptions, we hope to redefine what good food looks like.

Focusing on a practical understanding of the food debate, the project offers opportunities to get involved that are global in context, but personal in meaning.

In only our its year the project established a new grow site, held over 21 plot days, been visited by Green Party leader Natalie Bennett and enticed students to try wild foods such as squirrel curry, nettle soup and garden snails. The project is collaborating with over 5 academic departments and sustainable food is being incorporated in to the university’s new SPOC (short private online course) due to be released in January.

At the start of the next academic year we will be launching our schools workshop ‘Growing Minds’ as well as our Enterprise Fund which will be open to all students who have an ethical or environmental food business idea that tackles the existing issues of knowledge or access.

Students are being introduced to urban, small-space gardening techniques and are, for the first time, able to take home a grow kit or ‘portaplot’ to try GYO on windowsills or back yards for themselves.  The project really wants to develop a new culture around food where good food isn’t just the preserve of the rich or knowledgeable. It’s a right freely available to everyone - including students.

Food has been described as a unifying language to talk about issues of sustainability. That's why Hungry For Change is revitalising a conversation on green issues and our ability to effectively contribute and make change.

 

 
 
University of Leicester Students’ Union
£152,690