Food systems equality

Novel methods of community engagement are generating solutions to food poverty and injustice.

Vegetables on a market stall

Almost a quarter of people in the UK are living in food poverty, due to unjust and inequitable distribution of economic, social, and cultural resources. The Food Systems Equality (FoodSEqual) project is seeking to transform this situation, involving the people who are usually overlooked when food systems, policies and products are designed.

The project is underpinned by an ethos of collaboration and co-creation. Researchers are embedded in the heart of four UK communities, bringing local residents together with food manufacturers, retailers and policymakers to co-develop systems and policies that can provide affordable, sustainable, culturally appropriate and healthy food that people want to eat.

Dr Elaine Swan from the Department of Management is overseeing the community research in Tower Hamlets and Brighton & Hove, working closely with the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) and the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership. “We want to explore what people eat, what they want to eat, how they procure and cook their food, and why,” says Swan. 

Food is more than simply fuel. It is also a means of self and cultural expression, a source of pride and pleasure, and an opportunity for resistance.”DR ELAINE SWAN

 

Creative routes to engagement

Partnering with Pierre Bureau, an award winning local photographer, the researchers ran a food photography course for a group of Tower Hamlets residents, most of whom were women from British Bangladeshi, Caribbean, Chinese, and Nigerian backgrounds. “Photographs are a really powerful way of communicating and sharing feelings and ideas about food,” says Swan. “Through photos and discussions, we learned about how food matters in these women’s lives, and how creative they are in feeding their families while also passing on important cultural practices.”

The Tower Hamlets team also worked with British Bangladeshi artist Nasima Sultana on a comic to communicate ideas and insights from the research, and a local food map, which illustrates the social, cultural and economic history of food in the area and how this influences what locals buy, grow or eat today. The team has also produced several blogs, a film and a series of podcasts to share findings with local residents, food activists and researchers.

“All these methods spark interest that can be hard to achieve with standard academic research,” says Swan. “We will use our experiences to develop methodological guidance on co-production to help other researchers.”

LISTEN TO THE FOOD LIVES PODCast

Connecting with communities

Central to the project are the community researchers – local residents recruited to work alongside the academics. They are involved in gathering data and listening to the stories, opinions, needs and wants of community members.

In Tower Hamlets, community researchers Shazna Hussain and Sajna Miah, supported by Julie Yip from WEN, are using a range of methods – including food shop-alongs, cook-alongs and photographic diaries – to understand how the food system and policy landscape shapes the inequalities of what and how we eat. Shop-alongs involve researchers accompanying residents on shopping trips to understand the complex demands and skills involved in this seemingly ordinary process. The diaries record how the participants balance family preferences, tight budgets, health worries and time pressures to feed their families, and what influences these decisions.

Hussain, Miah and Yip also helped shape the comic, podcast and film, advising on appropriate images and cultural practices and how to avoid racist, gendered and Islamaphobic stereotypes.

The Brighton & Hove community researchers have led a series of community workshops and accompanied residents on visits to local farms. Reflecting on her experience as a community researcher, Sara Fernee says: “We have developed trust within the wider research team and our communities. We’re now confident in advocating for our communities, and we have faith that the voices of the communities we care about are being heard.”

What people want

“While the range of people we have spoken to has been very varied, their voices have been clear and united in the call for better access to healthy, fresh and affordable food,” explains Fernee.

Residents in Brighton & Hove discussed their uncertainty about how to cook fish, so the community researchers are now working on fish-related campaigns and advice. There was also a great deal of interest in revitalising the local fishing industry, and ensuring that more fish stays local rather than being sent abroad.

In Tower Hamlets, the food diaries revealed an enormous variety of shopping, cooking and eating habits, even within the same community on the same estate and underlined women’s creativity and ingenuity in feeding their families even when on low incomes. The women were very aware of public health messages about food, but found some of them confusing and were keen to see more consistent, informative messages about the use of fats and oils.

Influencing local and national policies

The project aims to challenge the dominant top-down processes of policymaking. The policy research team, led by Dr Katerina Psarikidou from the Business School’s Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), has conducted interviews and focus groups with key stakeholder groups from policy, industry and civil society, and co-produced research methodologies with the community researchers to assess how policies affect local communities and what needs to change.

The policy research team is currently working with community researchers in Brighton & Hove and Reading to feed into local food strategies and to meet the policy needs of local community organisations. Similar work with communities in Plymouth and Tower Hamlets communities will follow. The next stage of the project will involve feeding back findings to national and local food governance bodies to inform future policies and processes.

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Photo credit: Paolo, Adobe Stock.