Grants offered to bring communities together for Good Food Cardiff Autumn Festival

The Good Food Cardiff Autumn Festival will return to the city in September and Food Cardiff is offering grants to community groups to help them get involved.

Throughout the month of September, free activities are held in neighbourhoods across the city starting with a dedicated Good Food Cardiff Zone to welcome the 25,000 visitors attending the Amgueddfa Cymru Food Festival at St Fagans.

In partnership with C3SC, Food Cardiff is offering small grants of up to £200 to enable not-for-profit groups to host events or activities as part of the festival.

Anyone can apply as long as their event promotes Food Cardiff’s 5 Good Food Goals which support the city’s bid to become one of the UK’s most sustainable food cities.

Strategy

A part of a city-wide good food strategy, the Good Food Goals aim to ensure people have access to healthy and sustainable food and that Cardiff has an empowering food movement, thriving local food economy and a fair, joined-up food system.

Every year since 2021, the Good Food Cardiff Autumn Festival has been celebrating the joy of growing, cooking and sharing good food.

Over the four festivals, around 50 Food Cardiff member organisations have been involved, hosting over 100 events and welcoming almost 8,000 attendees. More than 2,000 meals have been shared and more than 5,000 plants and seed kits have been distributed.

Over the four previous Autumn Festivals, Food Cardiff has secured and, in partnership with C3SC, distributed £10,000 in small grants to support groups to run activities.

Celebration

Food Cardiff Coordinator, Pearl Costello said: “Our focus this year, for all our events, is to celebrate the abundance of the season.

“At harvest time, it’s a great opportunity to bring people together to reconnect with the seasonality, sustainability and great taste of what they cook, eat and grow.

“We appreciate times are challenging, so we really want to see as many organisations as possible taking up the offer of our grants scheme to put on a food or growing event, and to feel part of the overall good food movement in Cardiff.

“This year, we are particularly interested in events or activities which will help to bring communities, neighbourhoods or households together through food – ideally, events which are developed in partnership with the people who will benefit and which involve a diverse range of communities across Cardiff,” she said.

Community groups and not-for-profit organisations can apply for the Food Cardiff small grants programme on a rolling basis until 19 July at foodcardiff.com.

Alongside the grants, Food Cardiff can also offer support in promoting events, connecting with other network organisations and providing resources for post-event evaluation.

Any organisation, regardless of whether they have received a grant, can submit a relevant event via the Food Cardiff website to be included and promoted as part of the festival.