Creative Partnerships – Cultivating a creative approach

In the twelfth of a series of articles looking at the work of Creative Partnerships, Wendy Andrews considers the healthy eating agenda and looks at how some participating schools are learning more about the creativity involved in growing and cooking fresh fruit and vegetables.

With the current, Jamie Oliver-championed focus on encouraging children to eat a healthier diet, it is timely to look at some pioneering projects that are helping children understand where their food comes from by enabling them to grow their own in their school grounds. Several Creative Partnerships projects across the country are focusing on children growing fruit, vegetables, crops and other plants. Whilst the projects link directly to various subjects, including history, science and design, they have the potential to touch on all areas of the curriculum.

Edible playgrounds

Edible Playgrounds and Gardens for Life are twin schemes that bring schools? outdoor spaces together with sustainability, education and creative learning. Edible Playgrounds is a Creative Partnerships Cornwall initiative and is transforming playgrounds in schools across the county. Around 30 schools are making their playgrounds more enjoyable places for children to play, and of these, 12 are involved in growing their own food. Students, teachers and members of the local community are working alongside professional designers, artists, gardeners and play consultants.

As well as better-designed play spaces, the projects encourage children to think about where food comes from, and to take an interest in eating healthy fruits and vegetables that they have grown themselves. The transformed playgrounds include play-dens and shelters, multi-sensory plants, areas to encourage mini-beasts and vegetable plots, herbs and spices.

Edible Playgrounds? partners include Mor Design, The Sensory Trust, Gardens for Life, Beechnut Learning Projects, Terrain Design, Touchwood Enterprises, Wild Cherry Designs and a variety of local creative practitioners and horticulturalists. It also has links with Learning through Landscapes, Children?s Fund, Sports Coordinators, Duchy Nursery, Cornwall Outdoors and the National Trust.

Gardens for life

Gardens for Life is an international initiative which is run by the Eden Project in the UK and involves projects in India and Kenya. It links school children across the world through their understanding of food and their awareness of issues surrounding global and local farming. It stems from the belief that growing food crops in school gardens is the starting point for educating children about issues confronting the world today, including dependence on each other and using natural resources in a sustainable way.

Many children have little idea of the origin of what they eat and therefore little idea of the connection between rural and urban areas ? or producing countries and their own. The lack of understanding about the connection between food, lifestyle and nutrition is expressed in the health of our young people. On the other hand, most children in rural Africa know where food comes from, but many regard agriculture as a low status occupation that does not have much to do with ?real? knowledge which will get them white-collar jobs in the city. Gardens for Life aims to increase children?s knowledge and awareness of food and their understanding of the experiences of children in other parts of the world. This month, representatives from Gardens for Life in Kenya and India have been visiting partner projects in the UK to exchange information and knowledge.

Gardens for Life is managed by Eden Project in partnership with the British Council, DfES, DfID, Creative Partnerships, Global Dimension Trust, CISCI Foundation, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Royal Horticultural Society, Science across the World and Syngenta Foundation.

Dax Ansell is co-ordinator of the Edible Playgrounds scheme and Gardens For Life in Cornwall. He has been working with schools across Cornwall for the past two years, and is thrilled that they are seeing the results of their hard work pay off. ?These things always take time to develop, from the ideas through to the construction and planting, and finally the maturing of the whole thing until it is how the children and the teachers have really imagined it,? he says.