The Food Growing Initiative & The Big Transition

The Climate Advocates in Ireland and Northern Ireland have been working on food issues, from an awareness campaign about food growing, to creating a network of community gardens groups and encouraging communities to take collective action on climate change.

The Climate Advocates started the S.O.U.L. initiative (Seasonal, Organic, Unprocessed and Local) with the aim to encourage more people to grow their own food as a means of tackling climate change. Together with their partner Carraig Dúlra, a self-sustaining farm renowned for its expertise and training in this area, the Advocates created a network of community gardens groups. They also set up an interactive website where people can learn about community food activities and events in their local area, discuss ideas and share information and advice. This was followed by The Big Transition project in 2010 aimed to empower communities to take collective action on climate change, a concept inspired by The Eden Project’s UK-wide Big Lunch initiative (www.thebiglunch.com). The idea is to encourage people to self-organise and sit down for a low carbon lunch in their local communities. The Climate Advocates promoted the Big Lunch initiative in Northern Ireland and in Ireland they created and launched an online communication platform called Street Feast . The Street Feast and Big Lunch day of community took place across Ireland and the UK on 18 July 2010. The project received financial support from the EU Youth in Action programme and was also supported by the Friends of the Earth in Ireland.