The next in my Meet the Makers series is a business I have admired for a while. This local community food kitchen provides vital growing and cooking classes for people from all walks of life, and are therefore true advocates for healthy, sustainable food for all. Founder, Sarah Bentley, shares more about the iniative below.
I loved your TED talk on why the world needs more community kitchens. Can you summarise what a community kitchen is, and why they’re so important?
Community kitchens are wonderfully varied from place to place but at Made In Hackney our kitchen is a place where people from all across London — all ages, backgrounds, income brackets and life circumstances come together to learn how to cook healthy affordable food that’s good for people and planet.
What do you think is important that healthy, sustainable and local food is available to all?
We’re currently in the midst of a spiraling health and environmental crisis, and it’s no coincidence they’re happening at the same tune. Low income families suffer form health inequalities and are most likely to be obese, have diabetes and other lifestyle related illnesses — not exclusively of course, but in much greater numbers — and this is a total injustice that cheap food should be rubbish harmful food.
Organic food is essential if we’re to have a food system that doesn’t damage our health and environment — but the industry needs support and expansion so that the cost of it to consumers can come down so it’s accessible to all.
We — in nations accessing their food from the industrialized system anyway — need to shift to a predominantly plant-based diet. We simply don’t have the land and resources to continue with such a meat and dairy heavy diet — not to mention the ethics of factory farmed animals — which I defy anyone to deny is abhorrent once they’ve actually researched what this entails for the animals and workers involved. That’s why at Made In Hackney we don’t use any animal products in any of our classes — all our recipes are 100% vegan. Plant-based meals that are healthy, tasty and nutritionally balanced need to be normalised so people don’t need to identify as being veggie or vegan to eat them — they’re just a normal food choice.
You offer a huge amount of different services from courses and master- classes, to running community cooking sessions. Can you give us a picture of a typical day in the life of Made in Hackney?
Good question! So we run classes from our small but homely community kitchen in Stoke Newington but we also work from community, youth and pensioner centres all over the capital. A typical day in the MIH kitchen in Stoke Newington could see our wonderful volunteer apprentices coming in to help us out in the office. A super fun and action packed Cooking For Life course happening in the morning with a group such as Hackney Circle — who support retired people in the borough. The office staff will be busy promoting all our courses across the city, talking to community groups such as visually or hearing impaired people, low income families, recovering addicts etc — and plan future sessions and they’re needs and doing social media promoting our courses and masterclasses such as our upcoming Raw Food or Life Beyond Cheese Masterclass. In the afternoon we could have a class with Young Carers from Action For Children. This group is a fabulous group of amazing young people who have caring responsibilities at home and they come to us to have fun and learn practical, healthy cooking skills and might make Mexican Tortillas and Banana Nice Cream Sundae in the class whilst listening to music and generally enjoying themselves.
Can you describe Made In Hackney in 3 words?
Food. Environment. Community.
If you want a sentence I’d say — A magical place.
What do you like about being based in Hackney?
The diversity of people and food. The energy and resilience of the community. The characters. The love it’s residents often have for the borough. It’s cultural roots and history — so many things.
Do you have any recommendations for other local businesses or initiatives who are making a positive impact?
Keep asking yourself — is this what we set out to do? Are we doing what we set out to do? How can we do better? How can we celebrate what we are achieving. Stay true to your heart and mission focus, even if that means you have to turn down opportunities.
How can people get involved if they like the sound of what you do?
They can donate to us to ensure our vital, life changing classes and courses continue to happen. They can organise their friends and work colleagues into groups to fundraise for us. They can volunteer with us as class hosts, office apprentices and community event staff. They can attend our classes and support us by buying masterclass tickets — which help us fund our free community work. So many ways!
What’s in store for Made in Hackney in the next year?
We’re running an ambitious crowdfunding campaign to raise £45K with stretch goals all the way up to £85K. Scary stuff. We need this money to secure the future of the organisation and to ensure we can help even more people, in more areas across the capital to lead healthier, happier lives.
Find out more at www.madeinhackney.org
