It has been a few months since our last proper update. However, during this time much has been happening! Check out the diaries of some of our members below.

Tom Andrews is Associate Director at the Soil Association and manager of Sustainable Food Cities, a UK-wide partnership programme to help places take a joined up approach to all aspects of food, health and sustainability: www.sustainablefoodcities.org

Joy Carey is an independent consultant on Sustainable Food System Planning, the author of Who Feeds Bristol? Towards a resilient food plan, a Director of f3 local food consultants CIC, and Bristol Food Network CIC (BFN). Among many other projects, she is currently collating the findings from the URBACT-funded survey of local food growing projects in Bristol. The report should be available at the Bristol Food Conference on 20 October, which Joy is helping to plan. Joy is also co-chairing the Bristol Green Capital Food Action Group with BFN Director Jane Stevenson.

Dr. Karim Farag is Lecturer in Food Production and Technology, Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester.

Gus Hoyt, Assistant Mayor for Neighbourhoods, is the Cabinet officer responsible for overseeing the Bristol’s Bloomberg Challenge.

Mark Kidner runs M&D Kidners, a local fruit and veg wholesale company that operates out of St Philips’ Wholesale Fruit, Flower and Vegetable Market.

Kevin Morgan, Chair of the Food Policy Council and Professor of Governance and Development, City and Regional Planning School, Cardiff University, will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Bristol Food Conference.

Dr. Angela Raffle is a Consultant in Public Health and has served on the Food Policy Council since it began, helping with Who Feeds Bristol?, the Bristol Good Food Plan, the Bristol Food Poverty Report and bringing engagement from the health sector. Her job transferred from the NHS to Bristol City Council (April 2013) and since then she has helped make sure that the work of the Health and Wellbeing Board explicitly supports the Bristol Good Food Plan. Together with Zoe Willcox she invited a ‘Peer Review Team’ to examine how well Bristol City Council is doing in supporting Good Food. The recommendations will be presented to the Health and Wellbeing Board in September.

Sid Sharma is the co-founder of the Thali Cafés, the Shambala Festival, and a Director of BFN. Sid co-curated the extremely successful Food Connections Festival last May and currently has his head down planning next year’s Festival, which is going to be an even more spectacular addition to the 2015 Green Capital year. Sid also took part in the recent Bristol Food Policy Task & Finish group.

Nina Skubala is Vice-Chair of the Green Capital Partnership. A keen advocate of sustainability with a Masters in Environmental Management, Nina joined Business West in 2010 as an Environmental Adviser where she worked with over 250 SMEs to ‘Go Green’. She is now manager of their West of England Initiative the business leadership team, whose remit is to bring private and public sectors together by leading and supporting economic prosperity in order make this area the best place to live and work.

Kristin Sponsler is community groups rep on the Bristol Food Policy Council, Director of BFN, and has been busy with planning the upcoming Bristol Food Conference, as well as getting involved with some of the many projects coming out of the Bristol Green Capital Food Action Group.

And finally, welcome to Jerry Naish from Yeo Valley who is standing in for Tor Crockatt while she’s on maternity leave.

Bristol Food Policy Council meeting, 9 July 2014

The Bristol Food Policy Council met on 9 July at City Hall. While fewer in number than normal, the FPC got through a packed agenda which included updates from the Bloomberg project and included a visit from University of Cardiff Master’s student Bella Beynon.

Food and Planning Peer Review Report
Angela Raffle reported on the recent Food and Planning Peer Review, written by Marcus Grant of WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments, UWE, and Lawrence Carmichael of SHINE, Supporting Healthy Inclusive Neighbourhood Environment, Bristol University.This report was based on interviews with Bristol City Council staff about their roles in improving the health, sustainability and resilience of the food system that serves Bristol.

The report can be accessed at: https://bristolfoodpolicycouncil.org/food-and-planning-developmental-review-a-report-based-on-interviews-with-bristol-city-council-staff-about-their-work-on-food/.

Update on Bloomberg bid
Deborah Kinghorn of the Mayor’s Office reported to the group that Bristol’s Bloomberg idea has been shortlisted for the award along with 21 other cities. The 2013–2014 Bloomberg Mayors’ Challenge is described as “an ideas competition for European cities – a chance to win funding for a bold new solution to a major urban challenge. It exists to bring powerful new ideas to life – not only to help your own city, but to encourage others to adopt creative approaches as well.”

There are 4 key criteria that the Bristol bid will be judged on: Vision, Impact, Implementation and Transferability to other cities. Deborah said, “I think it is fair to say that the Bristol bid is the most bold and ambitious of the 21 cities that are shortlisted, and it is also the only project that focuses on food. We welcome Food Policy Council advice and support in engaging key stakeholders in the project.”

The shortlisted bids can be viewed here: http://mayorschallenge.bloomberg.org/index.cfm?objectid=88E27CD0-BF20-11E3-B2360050569A3ED0

Feedback from Task and Finish group on future of the Food Policy Council
The task and finish group (Kevin Morgan, Sid Sharma, Kathy Derrick, Gus Hoyt, Joy Carey, Claire Lowman and Kristin Sponsler) met on 30 May 2014 with a remit to look at Bristol Food Policy Council Terms of Reference, Functions, Membership, Links, Funding/bidding, and Unifying/linking the brands. It was decided that the group should have a strategic role rather than a delivery one. The key functions were identified as:

• Strategic Knowledge of local, regional, national and international policy
• Lobbying
• Identifying funding streams and making applications
• Linking to national campaigns
• Having a city-region focus

The group discussed whether the Good Food Plan needs action plans and theme leads but it was not thought that this would be achievable in the 8 hours that we meet per year and group members want to be flexible to contribute to a range of objectives and adapt according to short and long term needs. Instead it was proposed that the 8 objectives are used as a framework for discussion at each meeting and that we develop a collective responsibility for delivering the aims. Angela Raffle added that monitoring progress against the baseline report (being prepared by Beth Bennett-Britton) will be important.

The amended terms of reference were finalized and can be found at: https://bristolfoodpolicycouncil.org/about/

And last but most certainly not least, we are having another Food Conference! You can find out all about that here.