Community Food and the Case of Manchester Urban Diggers
Guest post by Dylan (REFUNKT) @re.funkt. Thanks for your contribution Dylan!
An insightful case study that delves into the need for more community-centered food outlets, challenging the dominance of the urban restaurant scene and highlighting the value of local food accessibility.
It was during that extended period indoors, working (or furloughed) as a chef in Manchester, that I first came across a small community garden in Platt Fields Park, wedged right between two worlds in Rusholme, a strong multicultural neighbourhood and home of the legendary Curry Mile, and the notorious Fallowfield, known by many for its swelling, boisterous student population. The park, which splits the neighbourhoods, has long been a popular space to spend time and hosts a huge variety of activities and people, from various sports and a lake equipped with menacing geese, to an orchard and what I perceived as an overgrown bowling club behind a fence. On a walk one day, I noticed some folks had begun building strange structures from waste materials behind said fence. Given this was an unused space, formerly for those inclined to recreational bowls, I thought this was already a neat upgrade! As serendipity would have it, shortly after, I found out a group called the Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD) was on the hunt for people eager to help shovel manure and build community—while keeping a safe distance during lockdown.
What followed was an incredible moment for my radical re-imagining of food, craft, and community. I spent around two years in Manchester, and my adoration for the city lies so much within the fences of those old bowling plots. Jo, Sam, and Mike–the founders of MUD–along with a revolving band of staff and volunteers, have continually battled council bureaucracy to uphold the sanctity of the space while providing vital services for those in South Manchester. My experience with a grassroots initiative had a huge impact on me, leading me on a path of horticulture traineeships, an MSc in regenerative food and farming, and eventually launching my own educational platform, REFUNKT. Gathering around food is at the heart of my passion these days and I’d like to take a bit of time to unpack what that really means, while also looking at the obstacles we face in creating more spaces for communal eating.
Community food has many faces, but a general guiding definition could be something like: Food that is produced, distributed, and consumed within a local community with a focus on promoting sustainability, social equity, and local economic development. It typically involves initiatives such as community gardens, food co-ops, and other local food organisations that prioritise access to healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant food for all members of the community. These efforts emphasise environmental stewardship, fair labour practices, and strengthening the community’s food security by reducing dependency on external, industrial food systems. In the case of MUD, their community food mission has always involved a range of diverse and ever-evolving outlets. On a Friday, for example, they might offer a free, funded lunch, while Saturdays might be a restaurant collaboration with Where The Light Gets In, or Little Window, grilling food at a fair price. Volunteers and service users could always rely on a hearty lunch—nourishing meals like soup, bread, and ferments. Perfect food for a windy day at the garden, chatter and laughter around the table. With food at the core of their project, they built the infrastructure to support it: their fire pit became a point of gathering, sitting nicely next to their gnarly, Franken-welded smoker. Jo often hosts “Cooking with Fire,” a nighttime club where people gather in the evenings, bringing their own food to prepare, grill or smoke, and share. You can see their work with the Stronger Roots program, which helps integrate refugees and asylum seekers into their community, and you'll notice how central food is to this effort. The "Harvest Festival" is a weekend-long celebration of the summer's bounty. Where else in Manchester could you measure your marrow or see if you make better jam than your surrounding residents? On a personal note, I made a neighbourhood-shattering pie that placed first: butternut squash, cider, and blue cheese. An older Mancunian gentleman and experienced pie eater who judged the competition, later came up to me and said, “Oooh, it were bloody lovely.”
‘franken-welded smoker’
MUD’s fire pit set up
What I wish to illustrate here are the various ways MUD enables people to engage with a community space. Their offerings have never been dull and have always felt progressive, delivering the perfect combination of homely and exciting in a modern culinary sense. Part of my interest in writing this piece stems from the difficulty I’ve had accessing or finding discussions on the future of community food. There is a potential movement here that has been lost to the winds of the farm-to-table trend and the general hype around the urban restaurant scene. Many cities now feel the same, despite the choice of restaurants being more overwhelming than ever. From the corporate slew to new wave seasonal, ranging from ego-centric wine’d up black hole to just about keeping it green and sustainable. That could be a little cataclysmic and I’m not saying that spectrum isn’t a tasty one, but is it really the best we could wish for? Let's start with the simple observation that opening a restaurant is an inherently energy intensive task, then leave with some sense of the food miles, poor farming practices, and the inevitable food & packaging waste. None of this needs to exist and is a luxury afforded by the consumptive individualist norms of neoliberal capitalism. Imagine if we were to focus our energies on a kind of social innovation, creating networks of farms and chefs that could supply nutritious and tasty food to schools and hospitals, for example. The fetishization of food via Netflix, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube might well be at the heart of this hysteria, but that’s for unpacking in another piece. While the farm-to-table movement does have something positive to offer and provides a great point of contact between consumers, chefs, and producers, it isn’t, in my opinion, a fully realised solution. At its best, it pushes creative boundaries, provides farmers with new income streams and supplies jobs for those interested in the craft of food. At its worst, it operates as a great big green glove of neoliberal capitalism, exploiting literally everyone involved. The least transformative part of all of it: Mostly no one can afford it. Beyond what I’ve already mentioned, it is this exclusionary element which makes it completely untenable as a solution for the spiralling issues of the food system.
This brings me back to my awe for the MUD project over the last five years. They have remained open and adaptive, offering a wide range of food events that tap into various levels of Manchester’s food scene. Simply, we need more spots like MUD. Dynamic spaces which are willing to bring everyone under one roof (or marquee) and ask, “What do you want for supper?”
That’s not to say it's been smooth sailing for them. A community garden comes with a variety of problems from theft, pests and worst of all – the council. Then you have issues with reliance on nice weather or funding, these are all significant challenges for grassroots organisations posing an alternative. My wishes in the future would not to dismantle the burgeoning restaurant scene, merely readjust the playing field. Spaces in which everyone can exist happily; gardens, canteens and everything in between. Not serving a mush of poor ingredients from a plastic bag but truly something with integrity and a touch of elegance. This is our future and we have a voice in what should be completely possible.
This piece marks the beginning of a series of writings exploring community food initiatives. I’ll be looking for more case-studies in future writings so please reach out if you have some ideas or feel called to contribute.
Best, Dylan (REFUNKT).
The content of guest posts, comments, replies, third-party entries etc. do not necessarily convey the thoughts, sentiments or intents of the Manchester Urban Diggers.