The strength of Slow Food

Slow Food in the UK has more than 100,000 members and many more people offer their time voluntarily to Slow Food projects. It offers virtual activity for those who do not have ready access to one of the 20 local groups, and its in-person community programmes are many and varied.

“We run programmes aimed at teaching kids to cook and grow, and projects around communal eating,” says Shane Holland, the Executive Chair of Slow Food in the UK. “We even have a new project for older men who have lost their wives, so they can learn how to cook. Through these programmes we promote joy, a shared moment of happiness around the table with plate or glass, and the belief that everyone — regardless of income — deserves something good.”

This attitude extends to Slow Food UK’s political campaigning. Some of its current actions include calling for unlabelled Gene Edited foods (similar to GMO foods) to be taken off supermarket shelves. In June of this year, a high profile victory after five years of campaigning saw the High Court rule that DEFRA’s decision to deregulate certain gene-edited organisms (PBOs) was unlawful, as the impact of removing safeguards like traceability and labelling had not been properly investigated.

For most people though, the real impact of Slow Food comes through rubbing shoulders with their local group. Tish Dockerty is the co-chair of Slow Food Ludlow Marches, the UK’s largest and arguably most active group.

“In Ludlow, people can take it for granted slightly that they’re blessed with great quality local produce,” Tish says. “But that’s not typical, so our group is putting the producer back on a pedestal, because if we don’t support them they can disappear overnight.

“We put on a lot of events. We’re finding that people are enjoying tasting and interacting with producers. The tastings we run at bigger events like Ludlow Food Fair are great because they reach a broader audience. We keep them free where we can to make them more accessible. The Slow Food bar we run at festivals subsidises our other activities.

“We don’t want to be seen as a bunch of food snobs. Everyone eats, so what we do is relevant to everyone. Deciding where we buy our food and drink is possibly the most political thing most people do. We just want people to know more about what their choices are.”

As a producer herself, running a natural apple juice business called appleTeme, Tish also finds Slow Food gives her a sense of belonging and offers welcome support.

“The life of a food producer can be quite lonely, so being part of a larger group helps you to realise the importance of what you do. Financially, working for yourself can be a challenge, but it can be done. Having the confidence to try it and finding support is important. Now I love nurturing the next generation of producers, helping young people who are just starting up their own business.”

With a well established cycle of annual events, Slow Food Ludlow Marches is now looking to expand more into education, aiming to offer clear information about the value of eating well. Steve Guy — better known as The Hungry Guy — is the group’s Education Officer and he has set up a collaboration with Ludlow & Area Community Partnership to offer kitchen skills and hospitality experience to the young people who live at the Ludlow Foyer housing project.

“It’s jointly funded by Shropshire Community Foundation and our group,” Steve explains. “We’re giving workshops on cooking, budgeting and how to phase cooking into their life a bit more. They’re all on universal credit so it’s extremely difficult for many of the residents to manage.

“But the main aim is to give these kids some tangible work experience and help them find a role so they can be in full time employment. What I’ve found so far is that these kids just need a bit of self belief. They need someone to back them a little bit. The next generation are the people we need to inspire to eat better — to value themselves more as well as their local community.”

The tangible impact Slow Food has made in preserving food heritage and democratising access to nutritious food is undeniable. However, it feels like there is still a long way to go to get its point heard by the general public in the UK. The movement is relatively unknown to most people, despite the large number of activities it engages in.

While those who campaign for, and volunteer with, Slow Food tend to be welcoming and down-to-earth, it feels like they are pushing against the tide. Too often, locally sourced, good quality food is discussed with overtones of elitism and exclusivity in the media, and that can discourage people from discovering Slow Food principles for themselves. Producers are written off as expensive and bougie, rather than the passionate, hardworking people they really are.

It doesn’t help that Slow Food International is founded on an intricate web of unfamiliar vocabulary. For example, it uses ‘Presidium’ to describe a community of producers that protects a specific product, plant, species or technique that is under threat. To the outsider, this can make accessing Slow Food feel daunting, or come across as snobbish or sneering. What is the difference between the ‘Convivia’ and a Slow Food ‘Community’? I have no idea, and I’ve been working alongside the movement for a decade now.

Using clear, approachable language would, I think, help more new people at least to get to grips with Slow Food principles without being put off from the get go. Perhaps the next step for Slow Food, as it finds its way into this new chapter without Carlo Petrini, is to work on making itself more accessible, not just the food and drink it champions. After all, Slow Food’s aims are laudable and have a track record of being realised all over the world — there’s no need to embellish or overcomplicate a story that’s already inspiring, relatable, and can stand on its own two feet.