Always on
This project successfully funded on 21st February 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
The Cranbrook Community Cookbook
London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Aim: Help us bring our community cookbook to print!
Cranbrook Community Food Garden Cookbook – Help Us Grow This Dream!
At Cranbrook Community Food Garden, we’re planting the seeds of community connection and cultivating a shared love of food in Bethnal Green. Over the past 18 months, we’ve hosted free cooking sessions where local residents gathered, sharing recipes, cooking and eating together. Now, these recipes are ready to bloom into a beautiful cookbook – and we need your support to bring it to life.
Why We Need Your Help
With your help, this project can take root and thrive. Your donation will cover the printing costs of the cookbook. By contributing, you’ll not only harvest your own copy but also sow the seeds of accessibility, allowing us to offer the book to local residents on a pay-what-you-can basis. Donations above our target will enable us to print more copies, and any surplus will branch out into free activities that nurture our community, like cooking sessions and gardening workshops.
Our Story
Cranbrook Community Food Garden first sprouted in 2009, transforming a disused play area into fertile ground for connection and creativity. Fifteen years on, the garden is a vibrant ecosystem, buzzing with life. We host free group gardening sessions every Saturday (and on Wednesdays during the summer), along with special events that bring our community together.
Our work is powered entirely by volunteers and supported by generous donations. Regular contributions support us with essentials like insurance, seeds, and tools. For larger projects—like this cookbook—we apply for grants. A grant from the Tower Hamlets Council Small Grants Fund helped our cooking sessions flourish, but as the funding cycle comes to an end, we’re turning to you to help this cookbook bear fruit.
Why Crowdfunding?
Though we budgeted for printing as part of the original grant, unforeseen changes have shifted the soil beneath our feet:
- Rising costs: Like weeds in a garden, printing expenses have crept up significantly since we budgeted in 2022.
- Unexpected expenses: Unforeseen circumstances required us to spend on extra, unbudgeted items during the length of the project.
- More recipes than expected: The range of recipes our community has shared is larger than we ever dreamed, and we want to showcase them all in a lush, expanded cookbook.
We’re using what remains of the grant to prepare the soil for this cookbook: paying for editing, translation, and creative workshops to co-design the title pages. But now we’re asking for your help to ensure this project blossoms fully by covering the printing costs.
Our Vision
With your support, we can cultivate enough resources to:
- Print a copy for every supporter donating £20 or more via one of the Reward levels.
- Gift a copy to everyone who attended two or more cooking sessions – a small token of gratitude to those who helped nurture this project.
- Offer additional copies to local residents on a pay-what-you-can basis, so cost doesn’t act as a barrier to enjoying this community harvest.
- Stock extra copies for fundraising stalls across the borough, spreading our cookbook’s branches even further.
Every pound you give helps this project grow stronger. The more you can contribute, the more we can share with our community!
What’s In It for You?
For every generous donation, we’ve a range of rewards to show our thanks. Whether it’s your own copy of the cookbook or exclusive perks, you’ll know you’ve helped nourish a project that will feed our community’s body and soul.
Join us in this flourishing journey, and let’s watch the seeds of this project grow into something extraordinary. Donate today and help us share these recipes far and wide!
To secure your copy of the book:
- On a mobile phone, click on the "Rewards" tab above this project description.
Or, on a computer, look at the list of rewards on the right hand side of the page. - Click "Select Reward" under your chosen reward level.
- On the next page, you can:
- add an extra donation if you want to give more but don't want to go to the next reward level up
- add £6 if you want to have the book posted to you (UK only) instead of collecting from the garden
- choose the quantity, if you want to order more than 1 book. - Follow the payment instructions to make your donation.
We will be in touch after the crowdfunding closes, to make arrangements for you to receive your reward!
Our official launch will be in early April.