Federation of City Farms
13 Nov 2003
Community gardening and city farms are all about education and hands on opportunities for people of all backgrounds, but particularly for children.
Since its foundation in 1980 the Federation of City Farms and CommunityGardens has been supporting member organisations in this work, promoting training and highlighting good practice.
The Federation supports a network of some 63 city farms, over 1,000
community gardens, and 72 school farms, as well as an increasing number of allotments groups.
The Federation encourages community gardens and city farms to work in partnership with schools by providing school visits both at the farm or garden site, or by supporting teachers with out-reach visits to schools.
Our involvement with Growing Schools was two-fold: we were contracted to “project manage” the programme, and in particular to co-ordinate the Innovation Fund.
The work that our members undertook with the schools participating in the Innovation Fund yielded some very positive and interesting results, and we are still learning from those experiences, some of which are detailed elsewhere on the Growing Schools web-site.
As the debate about children’s knowledge of food growing, healthy eating, exercise and obesity continues, we feel confident that the foundations laid by the Growing Schools programme will be developed by city farms, community gardens, school farms and the schools they are associated with as they seek to develop positive ways to support the aspirations of school, pupils and parents to learn more about where their food comes from, and how to achieve a healthy balanced diet….and curriculum.
Growing Centres – the NAFSO contribution to Growing Schools.
Six NAFSO member centres from across the country used the opportunity provided by Growing Schools to develop innovative projects designed to enhance teaching and learning already going on with respect to food, farming, growing and education for sustainability.
As field centres, the project sites were all keen to be as pragmatic as possible, offering enhanced ‘hands on’ experiences which enabled young people to learn in an investigative and developmental manner. The NAFO project objectives were therefore designed to be practical, achievable and to have rapid and effective impact upon the programmes of those centres taking part. In particular, the NAFSO objectives focused upon the power of outdoor learning, and the benefits that would accrue to schools involved
The NAFSO projects were designed not only to deliver to initial and specific groups of young people, but also to be sustainable over a long period, thus ensuring that project money would continue to deliver long after the project itself had moved on. The new growing areas, interactive learning zones, packages of farm visits, contributions to healthy eating and new links with local farms will enable schools and children to benefit from Growing Schools for many years. In addition, the dissemination of good practice from the project centres has meant that other centres are now developing and implementing many of the ideas piloted and operated elsewhere, further expanding the impact of the project.
All six project centres have gained greatly from their involvement with the project, and NAFSO members and their centres will continue to do so for some considerable time.
Napaeo - The Association for Land Based Colleges
Growing Schools Project
This Association was pleased to be able to participate in the Growing Schools Project. It provided the opportunity for some member colleges to further develop the use of their expertise and resource in support of schools and the National Curriculum. Collectively member colleges utilise more than 12,000 hectares of farms, estates, woodland and gardens for educational purposes and there is much to be done in maximising the application of these resources for the schools sector.
The Association believes there are some excellent recommendations arising from the evaluation that will be invaluable for future projects. It is note worthy that the evaluation of the Napaeo projects was based entirely on the written reports and without discussion with project managers or co-ordinators and without visiting any of the projects. It is the view of this Association that whilst this has some value it is an evaluation of reports rather than an evaluation of projects and that many of the practical lessons learnt through both mistakes and development of good practice are not fully encapsulated in this report.
Nevertheless the Association believes that this has been a valuable experience for participating colleges and is very keen to participate in the further initiatives relating to Growing Schools.
Learning through Landscapes
The Growing Schools programme has stimulated a huge level of interest in food growing, healthy eating and sustainable development education in schools and early years settings across the country. It has also prompted schools to develop teaching and learning techniques based around the practical use of their own outdoor learning environment in the school grounds and this is to be welcomed.
For example, over 8,000 schools and 2 million children subsequently participated in the 2003 National School Grounds Week Growing Schools dissemination programme.
The Growing Upwards project aimed to increase awareness and understanding of farming and growing, opportunities for first-hand experience, understanding of, and responsibility for, the environment, while promoting healthy diets and lifestyles among 3 to 5 year olds in Early Years settings. Through the project all 12 settings improved their use of their outdoor areas. Children were out for longer and more often and difficult areas were more useable throughout the year. Activities became much more child-led, with adults acting as facilitators and sharers of interests and work tasks. In two settings the levels of child and adult enthusiasm generated by the growing theme have resulted in a major change to the curriculum content. In one, the outdoors and growing have “replaced all of our original plans for the next six months”. In another, the summary was that “the project has become the curriculum”. Nearly half the settings identified significantly increased independence and self-selected activity as a major outcome of their project. This was due both to adult’s intentions and to children’s responses to the new provision and experiences.
Strong features of the projects were the many opportunities for first-hand experience, real tasks and responsibility for children. This project has added to a growing awareness of the importance to young children’s well-being and self-image of real partnership with adults, as well as the stimulus for learning and developing. The project was seen by many to promote emotional health and well-being, to encourage socialisation (there was more playing, doing and talking together) and to meet young children’s learning styles (active, sensory, exploratory, open-ended, play-based, expression through many languages). Most settings found that parental interest was high and that their projects have enhanced their partnership with parents in many ways. The triangle between home-child-nursery has clearly become stronger in some settings, giving children more continuity across their daily life and increasing the potential for their learning and development.
The Grounds for Growing project has resulted in the creation of growing areas in 9 different inner city London schools, the development of a wide range of new teaching materials, effective new partnerships between the schools and local, regional and national organisations, links to Healthy School initiatives such as free fruit schemes and Breakfast Clubs, the development of after school or lunchtime clubs, and support and interest from parents who have been encouraged to grow vegetables by witnessing the building of the gardens and growing beds. In most cases, significant new funding has been found, which is extending the life of the project and its effectiveness way beyond the initial year of DfES funding.
However, the evaluation report has also underlined some of the management and structural challenges which schools still have to overcome if this type of project based learning is to be more widely successful and sustainable in its own right and these issues are worthy of further research, development and support by the DfES and its partner organisations.