“Eat Wood Green” is a community food growing and education space being installed in the heart of the high street in Haringey. The creation of a new rooftop growing space in Wood Green town centre will provide fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices to support local supply chains and provide activities, employment and skills opportunities for local communities and beyond. This underused car park in Bury Road will be transformed into a cultural, community hub. A welcome garden will be open to the public to relax and enjoy and the farm area will be used to grow a range of edible crops, giving opportunities for volunteers and local people to get involved and learn new skills.
The site will focus on delivering social prescribing, green skills, and wellbeing workshops for visitors, workshops for schools, young people and families, prioritising provision for vulnerable and hard to reach adults, SEN, as well as providing education and volunteering opportunities and activities for all sectors of the community. Pending planning permission, there will be a café and affordable workspaces for local businesses. There will be cooking sessions in partnership with the Rising Green youth hub situated on Lymington Avenue, below, providing pathways to employment programs focusing on “plant to plate” skills development. Our partnership networks will access budding entrepreneurs, nurturing creative talents and the ingenuity of the diverse and resilient people that live and work in the local area as well as the hardest to reach in society, those who mainstream services have overlooked, the disengaged, unemployed, NEETS and young people .
Many diverse local communities have traditional ties to the land with complex histories of growing culturally specific produce, exchanging intergenerational knowledge and socializing within wider family groups that have been lost in the migration to the inner-city. “Eat Wood Green” is bringing people together to sow, grow, cook and share food. Reconnecting to their cultural roots, reclaiming their heritage and recreating a collective community on one roof-top garden.
The Eat Wood Green delivery team is made up of a partnership between The Ubele Initiative CIC, Black Rootz, Haringey Council and the Wood Green BID supported by the GLA High Streets for All fund. In addition we are forging partnerships with local organisations to deliver our educational and wellbeing programs.
If you want more information please contact: eatwoodgreen@ubele.org
