What is Travelling Kitchen?
Travelling Kitchen is a Bristol-based social enterprise working with schools and community groups to provide cookery workshops. Through the food they prepare and eat together with children, adults and families, they aim to inspire, to increase cooking confidence and to show everyone how to be creative and have fun with food.
They also aim to build awareness of the cultural, social and historical significance of food by celebrating food from around the world, teaching about the importance of food in festivals and tying food into curriculum topics such as the World Wars and Ancient Civilisations.
Who’s behind Travelling Kitchen?
Travelling Kitchen is run by Sarah Francis and Clare McLoughlin, two mums who met at their children’s school and began by cooking at school events and helping the school plan a garden. With a shared love of growing, cooking and eating food as well a desire to help others in the community, they set up Travelling Kitchen in 2015.
What makes it great?
The cookery workshops they offer a designed around the needs of whichever community group or school they’re working with. They offer a fun and highly interactive experience, in the classroom, outdoors or in a community centre. They plan, prepare and shop for everything as well as provide equipment and any additional learning resources and support materials needed.
Travelling Kitchen teaches the essential life skill of cooking; equipping children with basic kitchen skills, exposing them to a range of ingredients, demonstrating how to combine ingredients to prepare a nutritious and delicious meal. They’re also supporting curriculum learning with opportunities, whilst cooking, for using maths, reading as well as following instructions and processes.
They have been involved in workshops as part of Bristol Food Connections, Bristol Big Green Week, Bristol Healthy Cities Week and the Big Picnic, delivered a children’s Welsh cookery workshop at Abergavenny Food Festival and a ‘history of Bristol in five plates’ workshop for children and families on College Green in Bristol. They were also one of the partners in a project in Southmead called Meadows to Meaders, running a variety of workshops.
How can you support Travelling Kitchen?
Perhaps you’re connected to a community group who might be interested in a workshop with families or an intergenerational cooking group.
Maybe your children’s school could benefit from some support to provide cooking sessions, after-school cookery clubs, PTA fundraising cookery events or help setting up a school garden and ‘plot to plate’ teaching.
If so, do get in touch with Sarah and Clare.