Help us build a community kitchen

We just wanna eat our greens! (Overcoming crises with a kitchen)

We have a vision for a kitchen run by the community where carrots are peeled to help our people & planet to heal.

It's a vision for a kitchen that helps address the loneliness, cost-of-living, environmental and chronic health crises affecting our loved ones and wider communities so as we roast our potatoes and parsnips we overcome heartache and hardship.

It's a vision for a kitchen that manifests plant-based meals made with organic produce donated and bought from local health food and growing projects around the city & shire, uplifted, inspired, as the gravy warms and onions are sautéed we know it's all gonna be okay.

This vision for a kitchen is one that feeds a wider movement that unites people, projects and communities around our need to eat nourishing food, socialise, share skills and grow together, so whilst we celebrate, boil, fry and steam we regenerate the soil and society.

In our vision for a kitchen seeds are saved, hope is sown, future's are secured, dinners served and revolutions are grown. 

Would you like to help us make this vision for a kitchen a feast for us all to achieve?

If so here's a knife & chopping board, the rest of the story is below to read.

Who are you and why are you passionate about this project?
Hi, I'm Liz, Co-Director of Thrivemind Village, graphic designer, artist, framer and home-educating mother of Olive (9) & Daisy (11)

I didn’t know, that we would be handed a set of keys to an empty shop in the centre of Derby at the time I had the concept of a village in my mind. 

I was dreaming of the future, imagining and hoping for a better story for my daughters than where I found myself, which was lonely, isolated and exhausted, choosing between heating or eating in a burning world, taking on the many roles single parents have to fill to raise their children whilst pandemics, predicted floods, wildfires and food shortages took the headlines.

They say “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” 

I didn’t have much, but what I did have was a deep concern for social and environmental justice and a volunteer opportunity to regenerate a small urban strip of neglected garden outside a youth project premises.

Painting brickwork and clearing brambles alongside a few inspiring others, offering their time in the sweltering sun, the seed of an idea for this community project was taking root, whilst a couple of streets away, there was an empty shop which was about to unlock the potential to build a Village.

When did we start working on our project and what have we achieved?

Then on a Winter’s day in 2022, completely out of the blue, my partner and now Co-Director of the Thrivemind Village project; Simon Jones was contacted by local business owner; Lenny Reynolds who from afar, appreciated the decades of grassroots community work Simon had done and felt compelled to gift Simon the keys to an empty shop with a proposition of using it for the community. Simon invited me to collaborate on what grew from a small community garden, into the Thrivemind Village CIC.

We swiftly started a consultation with the public, inviting opinions and expressions of need that the local community felt the project could serve.

As we co-designed the project we were also co-creating it, receiving generous donations of tables and chairs, hot drink facilities and shelving from local organisations, who due to the cost of living crisis were sadly in the process of closing down, including Soundbites Derby; our only independent organic grocery shop in the city.

Growing the Thrivemind Village community, we have hosted open days, volunteer socials, creative writing visioning sessions, activist groups, weekly home education gatherings & parties, seasonal celebrations and the community garden has transformed with myself and three other Mums tending the plot weekly and a new partnership with Woodgrow Horticulture who donated plants and a young damson tree.

With our growing group of volunteers we have been developing a people's library, kids space, collective-care cafe, eco-shop and were successful in having my 'Together We Thrive' mural design funded by DCC and painted by artist Raze up the front of the 4 storey building where we’re based.

With much excitement we now enter into the Autumn community-led timetable of events, with a neurodiverse support group, Active Hope for changemaker sessions, Sober Socials, C-Scheme Sexual Health for Young People drop-in’s, more ways to shape the project with Have Your Say Sundays, an eco-shop to support local makers over the festive period and more.

But without a doubt, one of the most popular ideas that came out of our consultation was a community kitchen for healthy meals so we can share skills, prepare, cook and eat together as a community, to nourish each other and the wider eco-systems we all depend upon. We want healthy food, collective care and more celebration for all!

What do we want to do and how are we going to do it?

We want to build a community-run eco-kitchen that gives people affected by ill-health, isolation and the cost-of-living crisis access to affordable, nutritious, plant-based meals made with locally sourced ingredients in partnership with local health food & growing projects.

The kitchen will be the beating heart of the Thrivemind Village project, complimenting all other aspects of our offering and central to providing wider opportunities for volunteering, connection, & learning around cooking, culture, nutrition, nature, growing and more. It will directly contribute to regenerating the people and environment of Derby & beyond.

The money raised will help pay for us to work with local contractors and suppliers to achieve all aspects of renovation and installation throughout Winter 2023 before launching the community kitchen with a collective feast and celebration for all involved.

We will work with volunteers & partner organisations throughout 2024 to procure, grow, harvest and prepare food for the community's nourishment whilst building community resilience and food sovereignty in the process.

Why does our project matter and what impact do we want to have?

This project matters because it represents a holistic, regenerative, and localised solution to the unprecedented interconnected crises we face in our society.

In the post-covid context we face chronic health, isolation, cost-of-living and environmental crises that impacts us all. Cancer, heart disease, obesity, suicide, depression, anxiety, and isolation are all serious issues that can be helped by offering access to nutritious social eating events and spending time in nature growing food.

Ecological collapse, soil erosion, biodiversity loss and climate change can all be addressed by supporting local growing projects.

As the cost-of-living crises imposes unjust choices between heating or eating on families across the city we seek to empower self-sufficiency, solidarity & circular economies and more affordable eating and home-grown food production opportunities.

The loss of local projects like organic wholefood co-operative Soundbites and vegan restaurant Plant, Derby is left with little option. There is a very real need in our city for access to healthy, affordable, plant-based meals that isn't being met.

By pulling together to crowdfund the Thrivemind Village Community Kitchen we empower people whilst spreading regenerative ripples across partner projects, ecosystems, networks and movements for transformation locally, nationally and globally.

We believe in the power of community, we believe it takes a village.

"I find the Thrivemind Village project valuable because it gives me hope of a better future, of a legacy built by adults and children alongside. We are holding each others hands in times of desperate need for human connection. With hopes that we come to see a better, kinder, tomorrow for all." - Village volunteer, Claudia

"In a society that seems to value profit above people, and willfully ignores the support and rest we need to flourish, Thrivemind offers an antidote to these unhelpful and outdated rhetorics. Being part of what they are doing makes me feel hopeful and excited for a future where we value community, and thrive together." - Village volunteer, Lucy

Thank you for being part of it.

Liz Le Drew

If you'd like to find out more about us and how you can get involved please visit www.thrivemind.eco