Cookery School autumn update

New home, new name

Our big, exciting news is that we’ve got a brand-new Cookery School! We’ve been waiting for such a long time, but we finally moved in when the new Darley Street Market opened in July. Fortunately it was just in time for our summer holiday classes (which we’ll tell you more about later).

It was a rush to get everything ready in time, but definitely worth it as we’ve had our busiest summer ever. The school is located on the first floor of the new market, the fresh food floor. It’s fantastic being able to wander around and pick up any last minute ingredients for classes, and at the end of sessions any vouchers we’ve given out can be spent there: perhaps on ingredients to make the recipe again at home, or maybe trying something new.

Adjacent to the new cookery school, FoodSavers have opened the Wellnest – a wonderful space designed to nurture wellness, sustainability, and social impact. As part of the move, we’ve had a small name change from Inn Churches Cooking to FoodSavers Cookery School – look out for our new name in the market and on the socials.

Our Shaw House building has now closed, though we still hold some sessions at The Storehouse.

High Park School

We’ve continued our weekly sessions with High Park School: some students have been coming to cookery sessions for a few years now and have made amazing progress with their chopping and cooking skills. We’ve had some very positive feedback from the school in the form of case studies describing the students’ learning and progression:

The staff at Inn Churches invite attendees into a positive safe space. They use clear and simple communication which helps put the students at ease. The sessions are clearly broken down into manageable steps which encourage sensory exploration as well as learning functional skills for independence.

H has been attending for three years:

H can struggle to go to new places and needed the help of visuals and prompts to transition to his first visit three years ago. H has since shown great improvement and personal enjoyment during his time… He is keen to attend each week and will transition positively there with little prompting.

R appears to feel proud of himself when he can answer questions in group discussions about food and nutrition which helps him remain engaged and regulated. The staff have shown R how to safely use tools and equipment which is a functional skill he will take into adulthood with him.

For some of the students this was their last year at school, and we were delighted to have an invite to their School Leavers Prom. It was lovely to see everyone looking so dressed up and excited at their party. We’ll miss them all coming to classes, but we wish them all well as they move on from school.

West Silc School and home-school groups

West Silc School have also been attending for several years and have also made great progress in their cookery skills. We had another student say goodbye, moving on to another class, but not before doing an amazing job of passing their Food Safety Level 2 training. We’re so proud of them and wish them all the best in the future.

In addition to schools attending, we have also worked with two home-school groups. Both groups attended our eight-week Ministry of Food Cookery Course, learning about healthy and nutritious balanced meals, chopping and cooking skills and how to be safe in the kitchen.

Bradford Inclusive Disability Service

Bradford Inclusive Disability Service (BIDS) have joined us throughout the year for more sessions, with Teen Zone making a meal for themselves and their families, and Adult Zone making a two-course meal also for themselves and their families. Both events are great teamwork sessions, and we look forward to working with both groups again throughout the year.

Living Well and Volunteers

Although working with schools and young people to teach them about healthy eating and cooking is a big part of what we do, we’re about much more than just kids’ cooking (important thought that is).

This year, as always, we’ve had a lot of help from our volunteers with some big projects we’ve worked on. Earlier on this year we worked with Bradford Public Health’s Living Well team to make some “grow kits” for them to give to households around the Bradford District. These kits contain seeds for herbs and edible plants, along with planting medium and instructions. What started as a few kits quickly grew into a huge project where we put together 1,000 kits in one day!

Leading up to the event was a big task: trying to find places to purchase 3,000 packs of seeds at the start of the growing season was tough (remember to plan earlier next time!) plus 1,000 boxes, 1,000 dry soil pods and 3,000 biodegradable pots. But our amazing team of volunteers working so hard on the day and we completed all 1,000 kits in one day.

Thanks also to our volunteers we spent another day emptying cookies from Christmas tins! We received the donation of tins after Christmas, so to ensure that all the cookies were used before their best before dates and sent to pantries for customers to enjoy, we opened and emptied 2,000 tins, removing the cookies and putting all the tins back for use at a later date. We’d like to say a huge thank you to all the volunteers who work with us all year round: we couldn’t achieve everything we do without them, so thank you very much to everyone who helps throughout the year: Ken, Martin, Ollie, Rachel, Najma, Margery and Adrian, and everyone who gave their time throughout the year from Virgin Media O2, Virgin Money, YBS and Mastek. Finally a big thank you and good luck to our newest volunteer this summer, Ryan, who has now enrolled at Bradford College to become a chef. Good luck Ryan!

World Record holders!

Just before we get to our amazing sold out summer classes, one more event we just have to mention is our participation in Jamie Oliver’s Guinness World Record Attempt, connecting people across the world to take part in the largest (virtual) cookery lesson ever! Our team of 18 staff and volunteers – joined by young chef Isaac who regularly attends our cookery classes – joined the cookery lesson online. Jamie’s chefs taught us how to make fresh pasta and an easy no-cook tomato sauce, and guess what: we did it! Together we smashed the previous record, with 10,515 people taking part in the lesson across 42 countries. We’re really proud to have been part of something so big!

Summer holidays

So finally, on to our summer holiday classes. We’ve had our busiest summer ever, meeting so many new families and young chefs, and welcoming back lots of our regular class members. Almost every class was sold out with young people wanting to learn to cook. In total we held 34 classes, seven of which were out in the community with Ravenscliffe Youth and Community Centre and BIDS at Delius and Chellow Heights School. The young people at Ravenscliffe made various recipes including fruit crumble with homegrown apples, and everyone’s favourite dish: the pancake stack topped with fresh berries. Families and young people at the BIDS sessions became experts in cooking pancakes and trying many different types of fruits. We also held two family sessions with the NHS dieticians team and some of the young people they work with, and had some help from Zoe who is training with the dietician team, who was a great asset to our team during her placement.

Altogether we’ve provided around 260 places for children and young people to cook, learn new skills, gain knowledge about healthy eating and sit together to eat a meal they’ve cooked themselves – and maybe even try a few new ingredients. On top of that are all of the adults, parents and carers who have joined in, learned, and enjoyed the food our young chefs have cooked.

New foods and tastes

We’d like to finish with some lovely feedback we’ve received from a member of the Living Well Children and Families Team, who visited for a session and said:

I really liked how you approached each child individually and adapted to their needs and skills, it made it inclusive to all.

Whilst I was there, I chatted to the families and thought I would share some feedback from them:

‘It’s a good way to explore and introduce new foods and tastes. My child wouldn’t have been able to try some of these foods at home as I don’t eat them so do buy them. But we went home after the last session and tried to cook the items again for the rest of the family.’

Both myself as a parent and my child have learnt a lot, it showed me how to interact with my child around food. I like how we can leave the session and go into the market and buy the ingredients to make the recipe at home. It’s helped us explore foods more.’

We would also like to give a massive shout out to our partners at Marks and Spencer, Delifresh, Morrisons, FareShare, local allotments and kind public donations, for all of the surplus food donated to us. You all help to make this possible. Thanks also go to Bradford Council and the Department of Education for entrusting us with HAF (Holiday Activities and Food) funding.