A public meeting will be held at 6 pm on Wednesday 24 June at the Civic Centre, Cross Green, Otley LS21 1HD (click here for map) to launch the project in the town and to recruit volunteers to join an active team in leading the research locally. Anyone interested in finding out more about the project is welcome.

For more information contact Lizzie Fellows, CPRE’s Yorkshire & Humber Regional Co-ordinator for the Mapping Local Food Webs project, tel: 07833 250133 or email elizabethf@cpre.org.uk.

An exciting new project is set to bring people together to explore the benefits of local food in and around Otley.  The project, part of a national initiative led by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) [1], will support the community in investigating their own local food network or ‘food web’ [2], and its impact on the community, economy and countryside of the area.

Lizzie Fellows, CPRE’s Regional Co-ordinator for the project, said:

‘This project provides a fantastic opportunity for the people of Otley and the surrounding area to meet to explore local food issues with shopkeepers and farmers. It has the potential to build links between local people, food outlets and producers, and to discover new opportunities to strengthen the local food network in and around Otley.

‘The Mapping Local Food Webs project [3] will help to bring people together. Getting the community involved and making the most of people’s local knowledge are central to the project.  We hope that people from all walks of life will take part.’

The project is already receiving strong local interest. Councillor Jim Spencer, leader of Otley Town Council expressed his delight that Otley has been chosen as one of the 22 towns in England for the project. Councillor Spencer said:

‘Locally grown and supplied food is critical to the health of a community and to the sustainability of its local economy.

‘Otley is famed for its Farmers’ market and variety of award winning family owned businesses, especially butchers and baker, and to supply these there is a first class long established Auction Mart.’

The project has also gained the support of the Otley Courthouse, and it has been praised and supported by Greg Mulholland MP, who said:

‘Food mapping is a great way of helping the local community understand more about how the food market works in their area.’ The project is also being promoted by Yorkshire Forward.

The project is supported nationally and locally by Big Lottery funding as part of the Making Local Food Work programme, which aims to reconnect people with the land through food and community enterprise. [4]

At the meeting it is hoped more volunteers will be recruited to form a ‘Local Research Team’. Volunteers will be needed for many different roles including steering the project, interviewing local shoppers, sellers and producers of local food, and running a workshop for local residents.

‘The meeting will be a great chance to find out more about local food and the project, join the team of volunteers and to see how the findings could support and develop the local food web in and around Otley,’ Lizzie Fellows concluded.

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NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. We advocate positive solutions for the long-term future of the countryside. Founded in 1926, we have 60,000 supporters and a branch in every county. President: Bill Bryson. Patron: Her Majesty The Queen. www.cpre.org.uk

2. A local food web consists of the network of links between people who buy, sell, produce and supply food in an area.  These relationships of interdependence between people, businesses and places in the web benefit livelihoods, the quality of life and the quality and character of the towns and countryside. 

3. The Mapping Local Food Webs project is a new national initiative to engage the skills and knowledge of local people to research the spread of local food networks from consumer to producer and their impact on the local community, economy and the countryside.  In total the project will cover twenty two towns and cities across England.  It aims to achieve better understanding of the challenges facing local food networks, to build links within communities between residents, shopkeepers, food producers and policy makers, and to create opportunities to influence local, regional and national policy and planning decisions.  The project forms part of the Making Local Food Work programme funded by the Big Lottery from 2007-2012.  The project is led by CPRE with the support of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming. www.sustainweb.org

4. Making Local Food Work is a 5-year, Big Lottery-funded programme aiming to reconnect people with the land through food and community enterprise. A consortium of seven organisations, led by the Plunkett Foundation, is pooling its expertise to develop and promote different types of community food enterprise, giving advice to people all over England looking to re-engage and help others access good, fresh, local produce with clear origins. Our vision is to secure the long term future of thriving communities that are strongly connected with land, that understand where their food comes from and are empowered to respond to their own needs using community-led solutions. For more information, please go to www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk