`Radical Dream Canteen’ Lagan College, Belfast at the Green Living Fair 2010
A European Slowfood Project for Young People to be Involved in Food – cooking, local food production, food and health issues
EU Slowfood Schools for Healthy Living
This weekend a number of Lagan Students to include Orla Thompson – Lower Sixth form – and myself Celia Spouncer Food Educator and Slowfood Project Co-ordinator, set up an exhibition at the Green Living Fair to cook visitors to the Fair good local fresh food. David Patterson – Economic and Cultural Development Officer, Down District Council also lent a hand. David is currently running an economic development programme with and for local food producers and keen to engage young people in food production and cooking issues. The exhibition proved very popular with visitors enjoying Pancakes with locally produced bacon and apples, home made burgers with beef, lamb and rosemary, fish cakes with cod, hand smoked haddock, crab and prawns and gluten free sausages from outdoor bred pork. Students were on hand to cook samples. Everyone was invited to scribble comments and graffiti on the table cloth!
Orla Thompson has attended Lagan College for 5 years and has been involed in the Youth Food Movement. Orla Thompson, Gavin Peden and a teacher Marie Evans, will be going out to the Slowfood Terra Madre International Food Conference in Italy in October 2010 to meet other participants of the EU Funded project from Ireland, Latvia, Romania, Poland, France, Spain and Italy. Problems of obesity and loss of local food culture are concerns in all these countries. This project hopes to create an opportunity to share information about projects such as changing the food in school canteens, offering more information to students in primary and secondary schools, setting up projects to encourage children to grow and produce their own food and engage in debate about food and health issues such as obesity and eating disorders. This is a timebomb problem and innovative projects such as Radical Dream Canteen, could provide a useful model for other schools.
Contact Orla Thompson – Lower 6th Form – Lagan College for further detail of the Slowfood/Lagan College Project