The way to a communties heart...
…is through its stomach. Everyone has to eat, so what better way to bring a community together than through food?
At least that was the thinking behind Swan Housing Group’s decision to treat 10 of its east London residents to a cooking lesson at celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen.
The 10 all live in Tower Hamlets, a London borough rich in cultural diversity - less than half its residents classify themselves as white British - but which also has high levels of poverty and people with poor diet. Unemployment runs at more than twice the national average, and the number of people in good health is lower than the UK average, according to official statistics.
Swan set out to find something to improve community cohesion and health on the Exmouth estate in Stepney. Ian Nelthorpe, central services director at Swan, explains: ‘We wanted to engage people and find a subject people could talk about.
‘When we talked to residents we found everyone had a story about food. Cooking is something everyone can get involved in.’
A few months ago he decided to call the TV chef’s restaurant in Hackney, which was set up in 2002 to help disadvantaged young people by giving them a start in the restaurant business. The restaurant was happy to be involved, feeling it fitted in with Jamie’s ‘Pass It On’ campaign, which aims to get the nation cooking by sharing recipes and experiences in the kitchen with each other.
So at the end of last month, ten female tenants - five Bengali, one of Mauritian origin and four white British - volunteered to don aprons and head for Fifteen. The 10 are now Swan ‘champions’ who, in the coming months, will teach the recipes they have learned to fellow residents in the Exmouth estate community centre. If all goes to plan, their pupils will then pass recipes on to others. The ultimate aim is for the estate to produce a recipe book.
‘It’s about getting the community involved in cooking healthy food and giving residents enthusiasm and power over something,’ says Mr Nelthorpe. If the scheme proves successful in east London, the association could roll it out to its homes in Essex.
The project is a precursor to the work of the Swan Foundation, a charity the housing association plans to launch in May with the aim of improving residents’ lives. So far so good, says Pam Brown, a social housing consultant helping establish the charity. ‘The day was fantastic. We had a nice mix of women from different ethnic backgrounds coming together, which you don’t normally get on the estate… People learned how to cook who had never cooked before and [others learned] recipes they had never tried before.’