Community Kitchen

Aim

Creating a community kitchen in Derby City Centre to connect people with their food - from seed to plate, tackling isolation and food access

Closing the Loop: Programming and Impact

The community kitchen will enable a new phase of programming to address challenges in Derby like food access, community isolation, and mental health & well being. Key initiatives will include a Community Grow(th) Plan, where members, guided by Down To Earth's experts, will plan, sow, grow and harvest their own food. Seed-to-Plate Workshops will facilitate the complete food journey, teaching participants about sustainable growing, food supply chains, and practical cooking skills. If we reach our crowd funder goals we’ll also host free Seasonal Community Feasts to celebrate the harvests. Electric Daisy is already a proud partner of organisations like Remedi, Bridge the Gap, and Jericho House,  supporting people in recovery, those in the youth justice system, and those needing mental health support.

The community kitchen brings something fresh to Derby - a lively space where food connects people, skills are shared, and the city's food culture grows alongside our garden.

Cultivating Lasting Change

Investing in the community kitchen means creating a lasting ripple effect. It will generate skills for life (Planting, growing, cookery, budgeting), offer crucial mental health support through nature-based activities hand in hand with our partners, improve food security, and strengthen community cohesion by bringing diverse groups together. Our kitchen will transform Electric Daisy from a visiting space into a living, thriving hub. We view it not as a luxury, but as the final piece needed to make our work sustainable, impactful, and transformative, proving that urban living can be green, connected, and joyful. 

Our community kitchen project aims to enhances local climate resilience by establishing sustainable food growing practices, drastically reducing food miles through hyper-local production (seed to plate within the same site), and improving food security for Derby residents in the face of increasingly unstable global supply chains due to climate impact.

This directly supports climate action through:

• Creating green spaces that sequester carbon and improve urban environments
• Educating communities about sustainable food systems and climate-conscious eating and food budgeting 
• Promoting regenerative practices that restore rather than deplete natural resources
• Building climate resilience through nature-based solutions in urban areas
• Demonstrating practical climate action through community-led environmental projects that address both mitigation and adaptation

Our community kitchen project hopes to create a complete regenerative food system - from growing to cooking - that reduces environmental impact while building community climate literacy and resilience.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made