Food Citizenship: How thinking of ourselves differently can change the future of our food system
An interesting report and launch from our friends at New Citizenship Project, called "Food Citizenship". The launch is on 28th June, and you can sign up here.
From the event blurb:
"By most indicators, the challenges faced by the food system are getting worse, not better"
Food Ethics Council, Food Issues Census 2017
"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them"
Albert Einstein
It is time for those of us who are working for change in the food system - whether from within businesses big or small, in the public sector, or for NGOs - to pause, step back, and reassess what we are trying to do.
At the New Citizenship Project, we believe that this is happening because we’ve reached the limits of the current Consumer Mindset in our relationship with food, as in every aspect of society. We have come together with the Food Ethics Council, and with six organisations from across the UK food system, to explore what impact this false and limiting idea of humanity is having; to envision what it might look like to root our work in a bigger, more truthful conception; and to discover how we as individuals and organisations working for change in the food system might act differently right now to create the future we want.
The fundamental strategic shift on offer here is deeply positive: rather than seeing our task as to mediate the impacts of perceived human nature, it becomes instead to foster and channel true human potential. Our ambition in this report is to make this new approach - what we call Food Citizenship - tangible and real, and to equip all those working for change in our food system with a new set of tools and approaches to apply in your work.
We’ve worked together as eight organisations over a period of almost a year to explore these ideas, and we’re deeply excited to share them. We believe we’re ready to start a new conversation in the food system with this learning, and we’d love you to join us in the beautifully appropriate setting of Borough Market to get that conversation started.