Our Winter Garden Holiday Club in December 2021 offered 45 places for children on free school meals thanks to funding from the Holiday Activity and Food Programme (Reconnect Kent). We gathered an amazing and diverse group of facilitators, trusting that the young people would weave together all the experiences in the context of the Locavore Community Garden into a rich tapestry of embodied knowledge and memories. We are so inspired by the way they knew instinctively how the all these strands of nature and culture are entwined and how diversity of experience makes everyone feel stronger and closer together.
At the core of the week was Books for Change giving every young person the chance to define their own story. Every day they cooked lunch our own Cherry Truluck and Charmaine Jacobs and talked about gleaning, food waste and where food comes from. There were burritos, tomato + veg pasta, apple crumble, even roast dinner with Yorkshire puds – all supplemented with herbs and veg from the garden🌱🍏. Brigit from Two Tone Yoga created a space for joyful mindfulness and meditative movement in the Bell Tent, as well as yoga parties in the hall! On Wednesday we saw a clear shift when Dita Garbo brought all the Christmas feels – everyone abandoned preconceptions when they got dancing and we saw the openness and kindness flow from then on🌈. We wrapped up with drumming and festive singalongs with Kevin Richardson on Thursday and were overjoyed to see EVERYONE join in. We sent every child home with a beautiful gift bag including a nature book fromThe Book Den in Hythe funded by Folkestone Rotary Club
Huge thanks to the support team and Martello Primary (especially the maintenance crew!).