Introduction
Edible Edinburgh is a city-wide partnership that aims to inspire and motivate everyone across Edinburgh to work together to build new approaches to food. We believe that together we can make positive choices that are healthier and tastier and which bring social, economic and environmental benefits to the whole community. Edible Edinburgh has an agreed vision, where Edinburgh is a city where good food is available and accessible for all, making for healthy people, thriving communities and a sustainable environment.
Background
Edinburgh was one of the founding members of the Sustainable Food Places Network. The partnership was etablished in 2013, following a city-wide public consultation on sustainability priorities that highlighted food as an important issue.
Edible Edinburgh is chaired by Councillor George Gordon, the City of Edinburgh Council's Sustainability and Equalities Champion. The partnership meets every two months and is overseen by a steering group of core members. Delivery of Edinburgh's sustainable food city plan is carried out within sub-groups that report back to the wider partnership. In June 2022, the partnership was awarded the Sustainable Food Cities Silver Award.
Edible Edinburgh has recently partnered with Open Seas to bring the Sustainable Fish Cities campaign to Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Fish City campaign has been adapted due to the Coronavirus pandemic and aims to build relationships between traceable, sustainable suppliers and their local communities to support the positive effects of shortening the supply chain.
Partnership members, Edinburgh Food Social and Nourish Scotland, established the Food for Good Coalition in Edinburgh during the Coronavirus pandemic. The coalition provided 65,000 free, fresh and nutritious meals for those most in need. You can read more about Edinburgh's local response to Covid-19 here.
Edinburgh Community Food have been key partners in the Council-led holiday activity programme, Discover!, since it began in 2018, providing cooking and nutrition sessions for families and children. The programme has been adapted during summer 2020 to provide online events via Facebook live, with families receiving a box of food each week to enable them to take part in the fun food activities. You can keep up to date on the acitvities via the weekly blog here.
Edible Edinburgh partnered with the Soil Association Scotland Food for Life Get Togethers team to celebrate World Food Day on 16th October. A schedule of virtual activities both locally and nationally were publicised on the partnership's website, which included cook-alongs and the week long Peas Please Veg Fest where our partners at Edinburgh Community Food were panel speakers.
Edible Edinburgh continue working to engage with local businesses and have hosted two buisness breakfast events at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, which saw the launch of a new Edinburgh Good Food Business Charter. The events encouraged business dialogue on the ways in which we can work together to make Edinburgh a truly sustainable food city.
The partnership is also creating a greater public awareness of the concept of a Right to Food across different contexts and devloping a toolkit that can facilitate a consultative approach to developing a rights-based food plan, with Good Food Movement grant funding and partners at Nourish Scotland.
These activites support Edible Edinburgh's ambition to achieve the Sustainable Food Places Silver Award.
Working in partnership, see the article published by the LGIU (Local Government Information Unit) to find out more about our work and expertise
In conversation with Vivienne Swan, Sustainable Food Places, Edible Edinburgh
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Through the power of partnerships, we aim to make healthy and sustainable food a defining characteristic of where people live.
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