Leeds Trinity cooking communities
The cooking communities project uses after school clubs to promote intergenerational and cross community relationships through cooking and eating together.
The project was conceived whilst evaluating a Leeds Trinity ‘Cool Cooks’ club for 11 – 13 year olds in Leeds in December 2006. The project team was impressed by the harmonious atmosphere which resulted from cooking and eating together. This led us to consider the additional benefits which ‘out of school’ cooking clubs could achieve.
Aims and Objectives
To pilot and evaluate an intergenerational after school cooking club in which secondary age children and older people learn together.
- To break down barriers between generations, faiths, cultures and neighbourhoods through sharing cooking and eating experiences within the club and the community.
- To develop a toolkit to train teachers, teaching assistants and volunteer "Cooking Champions" to run city wide clubs.
- To develop Award Schemes for both young participants and Cooking Champions.
Partners
Funding was provided by The All Saints Education Trust. Education Leeds helped to identify schools to take part along with Extended Services Co-ordinators who put their schools forward for inclusion. Funding for the ingredients for both pilots came from Asda.
Methodology
Secondary schools were invited to take part and a number of willing schools were selected to pilot the project. Teachers and Cooking Champions involved were trained on the programme. Toolkits including lesson plans, recipes and tutorial information was provided.
Pupils had a chance to select their top 10 recipes and these were incorporated into the programme. The cooking clubs ran for a period of 10 weeks, teaching pupils a new recipe every week. Favourite recipes included Shepherd’s Pie, Spaghetti Bolognese and Marble Pear Tray Bake.
Promotion
Schools were recruited through their Extended Service Leader whose co-ordination role is to help schools to set up activities outside of school hours. We targeted schools in areas with multiple indices of deprivation.
Schools were invited to take part in the pilots, and as the programme meets many school objectives, such as healthy eating, community cohesion, intergenerational activities recruitment was relatively easy.
Resources
Funding from the All Saints Education Trust covered the cost of all resources and staff, but not including ingredients for the pupils and a take home bag of ingredients so that they could make the dish again at home. Teachers and/or Teaching Assistants were recruited to run the clubs, and this cost was covered by the project. Aprons and recipe packs for pupil and aprons and toolkits for the teachers were provided.
Funding from Asda covered the cost of the ingredients for the class sessions and take home bags of ingredients.
Evaluation
Before and after questionnaires were completed to measure success and improvements in cooking skills and knowledge. A roll out event took place, inviting other schools to get involved.
The results showed that before the club began 61% of the pupils involved did not know how to simmer food; 34% did not know how to boil an egg; 27% did not know how to open a tin and 20% reported that they could not follow a recipe. At the end of the pilot there was an increase in all of the skills with two of the pilot schools increasing these areas to 100% knowledge.
Interestingly, boiling an egg was not a task included in the after school cooking clubs, therefore it could be assumed that the increase in knowledge in this area is due to the students increased interest in food and cooking. All of the pupils made at least one of the recipes again at home, one of the pupils made nine of the ten recipes again at home.
Further details of the evaluation can be viewed as part of a presentations at www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/cooking (conference)
Lessons Learned
We have found that schools struggle to find funding to run after school programmes but two of the three schools involved have continued to run cooking clubs. One school is running the programme each term using school funding. The second school has used the resources to run a club for looked after children, again using school funds. In order to be successful the whole school needs to support the project.
Future Developments
Secondary schools across Yorkshire and Humber are invited to get involved. A CD of resources is available for all secondary schools across Yorkshire and Humber. The CD contains the tried and tested recipes, lesson plans, information on how to locate Cooking Champions, how to train and induct the Cooking Champions into the programme and hygiene training resources.
Funding from Local Food is covering the costs of supplying the resources and allows a further 10 school extra funds to cover the cost of locally sourced ingredients. All schools across Yorkshire and Humber will be contacted by letter to ask if they would like to get involved. New multicultural cooking clubs are taking place at 4 secondary schools in Leeds. It is hoped these will be rolled out in a similar way to the intergenerational cooking clubs.
Contact Details
Contact Name: Dr Lisa Gatenby
Job Title: Research Fellow and Registered Nutritionist
Phone: 01132 837 100
Email: l.gatenby@leedstrinity.ac.uk
Website: www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/cooking
Organisation: Leeds Trinity University College
Address: Brownberrie Lane Horsforth Leeds LS18 5HD