December 2008

In this edition:

	Editorial by Gerry Danby, Slow Food UK SPECIAL UK    Slow bread    Building support for artisan baking    Heritage Orchards    Rediscovering heirloom fruits    Turkish Delights    The Sustainable Living Film Festival in    Istanbul    Slow Food on Film    Directors wanted    Educate, Educate, Educate    Celebrating Italian Convivium Gardens        Meanwhile, in Australia....    Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden    Foundation        Education resource materials for your    use…        Slow Food Presidia    A book presenting the international    Presidia YOUTH FOOD MOVEMENT    Real Food Challenge    A message from the Youth Food    Movement    Maveric Report    Rachele Ellena describes her experiences    with Pangea (the Youth Food Movement    knowledge exchange program)    Twinning Breeds and Producers    A cooperative effort between Slow Food    France and the Midi Pyrénées Regional    Authority    Exploring the North Sea    Slow Fisch in Bremen

SPECIAL UNITED KINGDOM

Slow Bread Building support for artisan baking

  
Dismayed by the rapid fall of local, craft bakeries in the UK, a Terra Madre food community of bakers, millers, cereal growers and cookery teachers is campaigning to protect and increase artisan bread making across the region. UK delegates took the opportunity to launch Slow Bread - their very first Terra Madre project - at the 2008 gathering this October. While in Turin, they drew attention to the fact that while 90 percent of bread is made in craft bakeries in Italy, today these account for less then 3 percent of the UK’s production. To turn this around, the project is working to raise awareness amongst the public of the benefits of traditional, slowly fermented breads and assist them to make informed buying choices, through Taste Workshops, demonstrations and campaigns. Slow Food members assisted in devising the project by conducting 400 surveys on bread buying habits.

“One of the most important outcomes for us at Terra Madre 2008, from the Cereals Earth Workshop, was a commitment to continue the international forum and to work at an international level to secure changes in seed laws and labeling information”, said the Slow Bread Coordinator Susan Wynn. “These are key to the success of our project and would be very difficult to achieve by the UK in isolation. Being part of an international movement gives us hope that together we can make change happen.”

For more information:
www.slowfood.org.uk


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Heritage Orchards Rediscovering heirloom fruits

Slow Food UK launched a second project in November, which aims to increase awareness of heirloom fruits across the UK, promote local produce, and to connect local convivia and communities through the rediscovery of Great Britain’s heritage orchards. The Orchard Project is asking communities to assist by recording the location and details of existing orchards in their local area in order to identify where there is a need to re-establish forgotten varieties of fruit and to become active in establishing new community orchards or planting trees in school gardens. Once records are established, a knowledge bank will be created on the Slow Food UK’s new website which will also provide information on orchard maintenance, educational worksheets and traditional recipes using orchard fruits.

Slow Food UK Director, Sue Miller, commented: "It is important to create awareness through education. Engaging the community, especially children, is the key to bringing the importance of our food heritage into homes. Through young people and working with schools we can reach families and connect them with our convivia and their local food heritage"

For more information:
www.slowfood.org.uk


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Turkish Delights The Sustainable Living Film Festival in Istanbul

Food production was also a key theme of the Sustainable Living Film Festival held over November 26-28 in Istanbul. Following their journey to Italy for the Terra Madre meeting last month, the Istanbul Sustainable Living Cooperative and Learning Community worked with the members of Slow Food Toprak
Ana and Slow Food Fikir Sahibi convivia to organize a program of 25 Turkish and foreign documentaries on topics covering agriculture, water, energy, economy, food and mining.
Films screened included: Thirst, a critique of the privatization of water and the World Water Forum which will take place in Turkey in 2009; Learning from Ladakh, an insight into a sustainable community; and Son Kumsal (The Shore) which tells the story of the separation of a Turkish village from the water in the Eastern Black Sea by the building of a motorway. The Terra Madre community plans to work together with the Istanbul convivia over the next year on permaculture practices, urban gardens, natural building and sustainable social design to address the real needs of the city.

For more information and to view the festival program: www.surdurulebiliryasam.org

Contact the Sustainable Living Collective at:
info@surdurulebiliryasam.org


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Slow Food on Film Directors wanted

You too can help by getting directors and producers to enter the Slow Food on Film festival!
Following the great success of the first edition in Bologna, with 2000 daily spectators and 800 accredited journalists from 20 countries, and the screening of a selection of the best 2008 films at the last Salone del Gusto, Slow Food on Film will be back from May 6 to 10, 2009. Forms can be filled in online at www.slowfoodonfilm.com for entry in the following categories:
Shorts Competition - International competition for fictional and animated short films on a theme;
Docs Competition - International competition for documentaries on a theme;
Best Food Feature - International award for fictional and animated feature films on a theme;
Best TV Series - International award for fictional or documentary TV series.

If you know any film directors or producers who might be interested in entering the next edition of Slow Food on Film, please tell them about the site: www.slowfoodonfilm.com
You will be helping to make Slow Food on Film an even more international and interesting event.


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EDUCATE, EDUCATE, EDUCATE

 

Celebrating Italian Convivium Gardens

November 11 marked the first Festival of Convivium Gardens, Slow Food’s 151 taste and food education projects in Italian schools.
It was a convivial event, with each local community celebrating their school gardens, gardeners and organizers through activities, displays of seasonal products, markets and dinners featuring produce grown by the children. Parents, teachers, Presidium producers, food communities and the whole of the Slow Food network were also involved.
A school garden is an example of a learning community, a group of people keen to share knowledge about food and food culture. It is a truly educative community where every participant takes responsibility for passing on their skills and knowledge to younger generations.


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Meanwhile, in Australia... Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation

I have been a member of Slow Food for about six years and I started this highly practical project in 2001, at Collingwood College in Melbourne, Victoria. The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation was founded in 2004 in order to lobby for government financial support to grow a movement that had already started to deliver a comprehensive program of pleasurable food education in several Victorian primary schools. Our program has four parts: Growing...Harvesting...Preparing...Sharing.
Children aged 8-11 years old, in public primary schools, spend 45 minutes every week creating and caring for an organic garden in which they grow herbs, fruits, vegetables and flowers; then one and a half hours every week bringing their harvested crops into a specially-designed teaching kitchen, learning to cook simple and delicious dishes which they then sit down and eat with their classmates. Each student participates in the program for between three and four years. In many of the schools, the Kitchen Garden program is considered as highly relevant to the broader curriculum, and many students rate the project one of their favorite activities of the school week. So far we have 47 schools actively participating in the state of Victoria, reaching more than 4000 children each week, and are delighted to announce that the new Federal government has allotted $Au 12.8 million to help spread this idea to a further 190 public primary schools over the next four years across Australia.

For more information please go to: www.kitchengardenfoundation.org.au

We would love to have more Slow Food members contact us.
Stephanie Alexander
info@kitchengardenfoundation.org.au


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Education resource materials for your use…

At the Fifth International Slow Food Congress in Puebla, Mexico, in November 2007, a textbook on sensory education was presented. Entitled In What Sense?, it offers over 70 pages of tasting exercises and explanations.
To learn more about the wide range of Slow Food Taste Education projects happening around world, you can download a new report which explores the grassroots activities being organized in more than 65 countries by Slow Food convivia and Terra Madre communities.

More information and both publications can found here on the new education pages of www.slowfood.com


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Slow Food Presidia

There are 177 Slow Food Presidia in Italy and 121 in another 46 countries around the world. They involve more than 10 thousand small-scale producers, including small farmers, fishermen, butchers, herders, cheesemakers, bakers, and pastry chefs.
They are concrete virtuous examples of a new agricultural model, based on quality, the recovery of traditional knowledge, respect for the seasons and animal welfare.

Click here to view the new book about the Presidia produced by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity.


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YOUTH FOOD MOVEMENT

Real Food Challenge A message from the Youth Food Movement

A couple of weeks ago America decided that yes, we can.
Students across the country are also deciding that yes, we can...change the food system.
Over the past month, thousands of students, including Terra Madre delegates and Slow Food on Campus Convivia, united for real food. They held eat-ins, farmers' markets, and round-table discussions; they filled administrators' offices with 'real food' and held rallies outside the offices of fast food giants. Students broke ground on new gardens and real food cafes, all to generate support in their communities and educate their peers on the importance of a healthy food system.
Over 100 events have been held across the country, and over 300 schools are now connected to the network. Further, we have sent student and youth leaders across America and internationally to build our relationships and strengthen the roots...and we ain't done yet!

Check out highlights here:
http://realfoodchallenge.org
To get in contact with us:
http://realfoodchallenge.org/about/contact

David Schwartz
Real Food Challenge Team


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Maveric Report Rachele Ellena describes her experiences with Pangea (the Youth Food Movement knowledge exchange program)

I savor an apple and brie pie. You can’t imagine how good it tastes! The aroma of melted cheese, the sweetness of the hot crisp pastry mingling with the rubbery cheese and baked apple.

So much tempting food… It isn’t hard to see why so many Americans are overweight. Every package invites you to open it and have a nibble of the cereal, chocolates or cookies inside.
And you can’t resist. A lot of thought has gone into the design of cans and packaging to suck consumers into a spiral of overeating; everything gets gobbled up in minutes.
We are driven by a deep-rooted fear of hunger. Well-known expert in food history, Professor Montanari, has talked about our innate fear of having no food.

But it is all in the mind, because we aren’t hungry...

Click here to read the whole article.


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Twinning Breeds and Producers A cooperative effort between Slow Food France and the Midi Pyrénées Regional Authority

The sixth edition of SISQA, International Food Safety and Quality Week, organized by the Midi Pyrénées Regional Authority, is being held over December 11 - 14 at the Toulouse Parc des Expositions. With 70,000 visitors in 2007, the event is enjoying increasing popularity among young people and producer-exhibitors.
Slow Food France is an important partner for the Midi-Pyrénées Regional Authority and has been asked to organize five Taste Workshops which will involve Presidia and local products from the region together with products from Italy and other French regions: An appetizing encounter with the Gascon ox and the Piedmontese ox: outstanding flavors; Who rules the roost in Toulouse; The Bigorre black pig: great hams from European black pigs; Aveyron, the cheese scene.
Slow Food will also set up a stand and will organize the round table discussion Diversity of tastes and biodiversity.
At the same time representatives from the Italian Slow Food Presidia for Val d’Arno chicken and Cinta Senese pig will be meeting their counterparts from the French Presidia for Gascon chicken and Bigorre black pig in the production localities for the day to share knowledge and experience.


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Exploring the North Sea Slow Fisch in Bremen

Around 26,000 locals and visitors traveled along the “fish mile” in Bremen over the second week of November at Germany’s inaugural edition of SlowFisch – a fair to promote sustainable fisheries in northern European seas. Producers with a commitment to sustainable fishing and processing displayed and sold their fresh catch and produce: from hand gathered oysters from the Dutch Wadden Sea to shrimps from the Galician Fishermen’s cooperative “Mardelira”; from sea urchins to scallops; from catfish to herrings; as well as preserved fish and complementary herbs, spices, side dishes, marinades, wines and beers. A program of seminars provided opportunities to discuss some of the numerous issues facing sustainable fishing today and Taste Workshops offered sensory education for adults and children alike.

For more information:
www.slowfisch.de


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