Kindling has secured Heritage Lottery support of around £40,000 to support its food heritage project: Forgotten Fields.
The project focuses on the heritage of food production and availability in Manchester from 1750’s to present day. It concentrates on six communities from across Greater Manchester that have expressed a need to explore a particular food heritage.
Over two years, six inter-generational food heritage calendars will be created, in which, often passionate people with first-hand experience can offer knowledge, potential archive material or share oral history testimonies about local food production - for example: Ashton Moss celery, Timperley Early Rhubarb, or Highfield Park pigs in Levenshulme.
Previous heritage projects undertaken by Kindling include:
2009 Food Heritage Calendar
The Kindling Trust worked with Fiona Dunk and staff and pupils of St. Margaret's Primary School as well as local residents to explore the heritage and history of food growing, cooking and selling in Whalley Range.
The children at St. Margaret's School began with interviewing older people with a particular interest or viewpoint of Whalley Range's food history, in preparation for creating a 2009 calendar. Topics for discussion included the turning of 'The Moss' (bog) into fields and roads; Villa kitchen gardens; Digging for Victory during World War Two; the history of allotments, bee-keeping and orchards in the area as well as the cultural influences of Caribbean, Pakistani, Sikh, Polish, Somali and Arabic communities.
Click here to view the calendar.
Manchester in Particular Poster
This poster is an A to Z guide to Manchester’s unique political, cultural, ecological & economic landscape and will be launched in late 2009.
From icons to unsung heroes, the poster highlights what’s unique about our great city. Facts and figures, a few things we’ve lost in recent years, some of our troubles, and a bit of pertinent history. Mostly it’s about the individuals and projects battling to preserve the best of the past and make the best of now to ensure a sustainable and just future for all Mancunians.
You can view and download the poster here.
A History of Feeding Manchester
This chronological narrative of how Greater Manchester has been fed through the ages, looks at each decade from 1750 to the present day: looking at how a changing Manchester was fed, we can see our changing relationship with the countryside. How the ‘urban’ has come to dominate the ‘rural’ to make the most of market opportunities. A detachment from and disregard for the pastoral, and a reverence for the metropolis.
