Three Edinburgh-based community food groups receive research funding

• First year of Healthy Planet, Healthy People research grants by Williamson Trust and Royal Society of Edinburgh

• Nearly £60,000 worth of funding will be given to 12 research projects in communities across Scotland

• Community research projects to promote the health of individuals will take place in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Inverness, Campbeltown, Fife, Lewis, Orkney and Perth.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Williamson Trust have given their support to three community research projects in Edinburgh, aimed at promoting healthy living.

The RSE and Williamson Trust have given their support to 12 new community-led research projects, which will promote the health of individuals by fostering healthy communities, healthy environments, and healthy food.

This is the first year that the Healthy Planet, Healthy People awards have been given out. Originally only ten awards were planned, however the strength of the applications was such that a further two projects will now be supported.

The Community Renewal Trust in North Edinburgh has received £4,600 of funding. The Trust is part of the R2 network of organisations that collaborate to achieve better outcomes in local communities. 

Through the project, the group will explore the feasibility of establishing a food buying group for local organisations that would achieve economies of scale, improve the quality and quantity of food available in the area, reduce food waste and reduce the time, energy and food miles that local organisations are spending in procuring food in north Edinburgh.

R2 co-ordinator Anita Aggarwal said: “Local people and organisations have been at the forefront of finding dignified solutions to food insecurity in the area.

“This award will help us work towards our vision of sustainably produced food being affordable and available in the area. As a network of organisations, we know we can achieve more if we work together, but finding time to collaborate can be hard, so this helping hand will go a long way and have a wide impact in the long term.”

Art Walk Projects based in Portobello is set receive £5,000 to develop a series of public conversations with artists, scientists, farmers, landscape architects and climate scientists to establish a strategy for coastal communities to achieve net zero.

Founder and artistic director Rosy Naylor said: “We are so very delighted to receive the support from RSE and Williamson Trust enabling us to develop our new project ‘Thrift: Climate Conversations’ involving local coastal communities in conversations around issues of food production, farming and coastal ecologies of northeast Edinburgh.

“It will provide for a rich multi-disciplinary approach engaging local publics around possible future food environments.”

Nourish Scotland’s “Our Right to Food” project is the third in Edinburgh to benefit from funding, receiving £5,000. The project aims to develop ways to measure the progress towards the right to good quality affordable food in Scotland.

Senior project officer Irina Martin said: “We are delighted to have been successful to get the ‘Healthy Planet, Healthy People’: Community-led Award. The Our Right to Food project aims to learn what people in Scotland would choose as a healthy and enjoyable way to eat so that rights holders and decision makers can better identify how to make this accessible for all.

“It does this by working with people from the community to create and then price “shopping baskets” for typical households across Scotland – the idea being that these baskets can be used to measure whether a “good enough” diet is affordable.

“This funding will support the next phase of the project which will focus on a typical Pakistani household in Scotland. This is to explore whether a “good enough” diet is more or less affordable for different groups within Scotland, and in doing so, show the functional value it could have when it comes to measuring progress toward achieving the right to food in Scotland.”

Aside from the three food security projects in Edinburgh, funding has also been awarded to a number of other projects in the west of Scotland, the Highlands and Islands, Fife and Perth.

Professor David E Salt FRSE, chair of the Williamson Trust said: “I speak for all the trustees when I say we were incredibly excited to see the very strong response we got from communities across Scotland.

“From food waste, the right to food and cooperative local growing, to rebuilding biodiversity and land rights, community street play, urban forests, and climate conversations as street theatre.

“The Trust hopes this seed funding will deliver real change and lead to larger impacts going into the future. We are very excited to be working with these communities across Scotland to help them make a new and better future.”

RSE Vice President, Research, Professor Anne Anderson OBE FRSE said: “This is the first time that the RSE has supported this type of research, as the Society broadens its range of research awards, and I feel that it is vital that we do so.

“The health of the individual and the health of the environment are inextricably linked, and it is my hope that these awards will now provide a boost to these exciting research groups which will lead to improvements in both.

“I very much look forward to following their progress and achievements over the next 12 months.”