AMT Public

Press release: 1 July 2009

Town’s appetite for local food wins it top market town award in Yorkshire and Humber

A project to mobilize a community around local food has been named winner of the Yorkshire and Humber Market Town Awards.

Incredible Edible Todmorden is a whole town approach to regeneration and sustainable living, which aims to reconnect people with local and self produced food and create training opportunities, jobs and a better experience for tourists in the process.

Todmorden had lost its growing and buying local tradition. Hundreds of allotments had gone, the local market was empty 2 out of the 5 days it opened, and did little to promote local produce. Children were without access to local land-based training, and the majority of the public had lost the art of growing, eating and sharing the fruits of their labours.

Incredible Edible Todmorden is turning this situation around. Operating across 3 areas – Community, Schools and Business (including farming) – the group has planted orchards, vegetables and herbs in public places, gained the agreement of the local Council to release land for community growing, and partnered with the local social housing management in a ‘Tenants Growing Scheme’.

In the year since the project started, Incredible Edible Todmorden has launched two campaigns: ‘Every Egg Matters’ and ‘Put Markets back into Market Towns’ – working with the Council, local traders and farmers to revitalise the local market.

All schools are partners and in 2011, the local High School will offer a diploma in ‘Land-based Industries’, creating training opportunities never before offered.

Incredible Edible Todmorden were named winners of the Environment and Culture Category of the Yorkshire and Humber Market Town Awards and also overall regional winners. They received a framed certificate and will now go head-to-head with other regional winners to compete for the National Market Town Award at the Action for Market Towns Convention in Melton Mowbray in October.

Incredible Edible Todmorden is a team effort that involves a wide range of local partners: Todmorden in Bloom, Todmorden Business Association, Market Traders, Local Farmers, Green Business Network, All Local Schools, Probation services, Northern Rail, Assura (Health Centre developers), Primary Care Trust, Churches Together, Todmorden Together , Community Services (Payback scheme)

Other winners were:

Business and Economy category: Bedale Heritage Partnership Scheme – A good example of a town wide integrated programme that is helping to develop resilience in the local economy. An effective regeneration project with multiple aims from improving shop fronts in the town centre to turning underused buildings into office space.

Partnership and Strategic Working category: Wallingfen Way – B1230 Working Group – A project that is trying to solve a ‘real’ community issue. Involving three separate communities the project shows that people can work together with one ultimate aim. Innovative and transferable, the next challenge will be to raise sufficient funds to make the vision a reality.

Social and Community category: Driffield Community Street Survey – This project demonstrated that small communities can get together, articulate where improvements could be made, and then go on to make the authorities do something about it. Street surveys are becoming more important and this project is already being replicated in other towns in the area.

The Yorkshire and Humber Market Town Awards are part of the National Market Town Awards run by Action for Market Towns which each year celebrate the great variety of volunteer-led projects that are helping to regenerate and sustain small towns throughout the country.

Ends

For further press information on the market town awards, please contact: John Pole on 01430 441557. E-mail: john.pole@towns.org.uk

To contact Incredible Edible Todmorden, ring Mary on 01706 815407 or Pam on 07528 037 263 or email Estelle at todberbrown@gmail.com See also: www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk

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