HEALHTIEST TOWN ABERFELDY
Report to Heartland Wind for funding
June 26
Background
Healthiest Town Aberfeldy (HTA) started in 2022 with the intention to encourage and enable our community to live healthier lives. We work under four ‘pillars’ –
• Eat Real Food
• Move More
• Stay Connected to people, purpose and nature
• Find Balance.
We achieve this by running events and activities, facilitating and supporting people and organisations in our community to run events and activities and by promoting the principles of positive health. We have achieved a lot in the last 3 years and have a profile far beyond our community.
Eat Real Food
The work around food has been informed by the bringing together of local farmers, growers, hospitality businesses, shops and businesses, he food larder and social supermarket and many others. The support from Heartland Wind has enabled many projects to happen including
Local Food Plan – First draft completed May 26 with aim to highlight issues around food locally and identify solutions as to how we can encourage and enable more people to eat real, local food, cook more, reduce waste and grow more
Open Gate Festival – this has now run for 2 years over 10 days with open gardens, workshops, events, talks, and celebrations taking place. We have had events taking place over Highland Perthshire.
Lets Get Growing – a network of local growers and support to local schools on growing food.
Too Good To Waste – a food waste reduction campaign with hospitality businesses and in the local community.
Aberfeldy Manifesto – re-launch of the Aberfeldy manifesto, first written in 1974.
Cooking classes – in the community for the community
Workshops – dehydrating, preserving and other related food activities.
Awareness raising and campaigns – market stalls, social media, attendance at meetings and events etc.
Community growing charter – working with Bioregioning Tayside across the region
Visit from First Minister John Swinney
Update on Local Food Plan and activities supported by Heartland Wind
We are very grateful for the support from Heartland Wind and this has enabled us to move and develop our food work.
The Too Good To waste campaign happened in March with a collaboration between Healthiest Town and Climate Café Aberfeldy. We focussed on awareness raising publicity and promotion, showing of Food inc with a food waste demonstration and discussions with local businesses. This needs further development and engagement.
Local Schools area all engaging with food issues and we continue to support hem in a range of ways including providing volunteers and funding, supporting workshop delivery, opening their gardens to the public and more.
The Hyper Local Food Plan (attached), supported in part by Bioregioning Tayside, is a hyper local response to the Good Food Nation Act, as well as climate and other policies. The aim is for the Hyper Local Food Plan to identify ways we can encourage and enable more people to eat real, local food, to cook more, grow more and reduce food waste.
It involved wide ranging research along with local conversations. This includes
• national and regional policy summaries
• national and local organisations working on food
• food conversations locally to identify issues and potential solutions from growers and producers, hospitality providers, shops and business owners and individuals.
• Food prices locally versus national
• Food mapping of where local food comes from
• Some projects worked up to a basic outline plan
This is a first draft of an action plan that will evolve and develop both locally and nationally. We hope that the Hyper local Food Plan format will become a mechanism of delivery for the Good Food Nation Act.
At a local level we plan to:
• build a local food partnership to build and extend this work and put projects into practice
• Conduct further research
• Promote and develop our food map
• Develop projects including the food transport/ shop project and online sales platform
• Promote the Aberfeldy meal working with Great Perthshire and other partners
• Develop the transport/ mobile shop project outlined in Appendix 4 of the HLF
• Run various campaigns over the coming 6 months including
• food map and local food promotion
• carbon friendly diet
• food waste reduction
At a regional/ national level we plan to:
• Work with Bioregioning Tayside on developing the HLFP model and promote this
• Work with Perth and Kinross Council on their Good Food Nation plan
• Work with Scottish government on value of Hyper Local Food Plan s
• Work with other organisations
We are very grateful for the ongoing support of Heartland Wind as it gives Healthiest Town the platform to take on and develop this important work which is not easy to fund or do. We feel we are in a strong position to support local businesses and organistaions and the delivery of projects with them. We also hope to encourage and support other communities to develop HLFP’s and to help us all achieve the Good Food Nation Act aims.
If the Heartland Wind Directors would be interested in continuing this funding partnership, we would be delighted to apply! Ongoing work would include
• Building the local food partnership
• Delivering projects
• Working with regional and national organisaitons
• Working with Climate Café Aberfeldy on carbon specific projects and promotions
• Running further campaigns
For now we thank you.
Healthiest Town Aberfeldy