Sharing Bread+ is an exciting new community project from charity group Reaching People in partnership with Planet Leicester Bakers. Using bread to create safe space for debate, the project seeks to challenge stigma and judgement. It will encourage people to come together to find ways to strengthen relations and build togetherness within communities and also between each other.
Attendees at the Patient Information Forum event last week warmly welcomed the concept of using bread to engage people around health. The event, ‘Reaching and Engaging Hard to Reach Groups in the Provision of Health Information’, was a fascinating day of presentations from health communications professionals. The focus was particularly people and communities that are perhaps easier to ignore and I was delighted to be asked to attend and present with Jenny Hand, CEO of Reaching People.
Presenting at the Patient Information Forum event, The Royal College of Anaesthetists, London. Photo credit: PIF
The funders were delighted with the report as well, feeling that it was ‘incredibly comprehensive’ and ‘a great mix of statistics and stories that captured the impact the project has had for service users’. The media release gives a flavour of the success of the project: …
A service from Planet Leicester Bakers that is increasingly seeing inquiries is that for team building . Recently I was delighted to work with the large Nottingham employer, Capital One, and a team of their data analysts. We spent a rainy day up on the hill in Sneinton, making bread under the watchful sails of Green’s Windmill.
Despite the rain the Capital One team embraced every moment with the dough!
Green’s Windmill is a working windmill charity and have an education kitchen room on-site which is perfect for group bread baking. We were able to support the charity further by using their flour and, not only that, the venue included a tour of the windmill in the price. We made pizza dough and windmill volunteers baked the pizzas for lunch in the garden pizza oven.
The team worked well together in pairs of Bread Buddies and all received certificates and their bread to take away.
It is rare to find bread bakers in teams – which is part of the joy of offering this activity to build togetherness and well-being. It demands supporting each other and team members finding their way through a new and unfamiliar task, negotiating joint decisions. Everyone got to take away a recipe if they wished and left with new knowledge about this much-loved staple food.
” It was a very productive and well-organized event. We received a detailed nicely made plan/information beforehand. On the day, we got the opportunity to team up and learn new baking skills and taste the product made by ourselves. The choice of the venue is really good and special. We got the opportunity to have the pizza baked onsite and have had a nice tour of the historical place.” Capital One’s organiser
The days are very much tailored to the needs of the team so the first step in booking is to get in touch and start to plan. Another team, this time from the NHS, is booked for September. Community venues can be suggested by Planet Leicester Bakers and if you are based in Nottingham, Green’s Windmill would be delighted to host us again!
Planet Leicester Bakers is delighted to share news of the first work in the Leicester Bread Clubs initiative, which was featured in edition 3 of Planet Leicester News. Working in partnership with Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, these first clubs are funded by Leicester City Council’s ‘Time to Change’ fund, which aims to improve mental health in the city.
Making bread gives time to talk – both activities at the heart of the first Leicester Bread Clubs
For more information, including how to volunteer on the project, check out the media release in this post. You can also contact Planet Leicester Bakers via this site, by email or phone, for more details of this exciting new initiative! …
Baking a Difference has been a fantastic community bread project to create and deliver in collaboration with Learning for the Fourth Age (L4A).
Over several months Planet Leicester Bakers, with L4A’s staff and volunteers, delivered 12 sessions in 3 very different residential settings for older people: a care home, nursing home and sheltered housing.
