Incredible Edible

Short Summary

The Incredible Edible Network is an urban agriculture and public gardening project that was established as a single group in 2008 in Todmorden. It has since grown to a network of more than a thousand groups, both in the UK and abroad, that are focused on local, sustainable food production for their communities.

Website address: https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk

Location: Started in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, UK, but there are now sister groups all over the world, e.g., in France, Colombia, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, New Zealand, and Palestine

Key leaders:

  • Pamela Warhurst: Co-founder of Incredible Edible and current chair of the Incredible Edible Network
  • Mary Clear: Co-founder of Incredible Edible and current chair of Incredible Edible Todmorden

The Incredible Edible Network's logo. source

Profile

Their mission can be summarized as follows: “Our vision is to create kind, confident and connected communities through the power of food” (source).

There are more than 148 Incredible Edible groups in the UK and roughly 1000 groups worldwide.

They describe their model as being structured on three “spinning plates” consisting of community, learning, and business:

“Imagine that you are a plate spinner. There are three plates and if you use your will and passion to spin all three, the energy they create not only puts on a great show but helps everyone who sees think differently about the future.” (source)

  1. Community: They seek to “galvanize [local] community through growing and celebrating local food” (source). They grow food in public areas where community members can harvest food for themselves for free and actively work to get community members involved in their activities, showing “how ordinary people can transform their own landscapes and [turn] disused plots into abundant sources of healthy food” (source).
  2. Learning: Educating community members (both schoolchildren and adults) through gardening clubs, training courses, and workshops on gardening and soil science as well as topics like “chutney making, pickling, and frugal cooking” (source).
  3. Business: They do everything they can to support their local food economy and keep money within their communities. The idea is that “the more people shop for local food, the stronger our local food economy is and the stronger our communities are. We support local and buy local, we promote ‘green routes’ that celebrate local growing and walk past local business.” (source)

YOUTUBE 4KmKoj4RSZw 2012 TED Talk by cofounder Pam Warhurst, which has more than 190,000 views.

Governance

The Incredible Edible Network is led by a Board of Directors who are in charge of the organization’s strategic direction and governance. They are also in charge of and legally responsible for the organization’s brand. The board undertook a full governance review in 2018 “in order to best represent the UK movement and to be sustainable and effective in the next stage of the movement’s growth” (source).

Pointing to Incredible Edible’s investment in inclusive decision-making, co-founder Pam Warhurst said, “We are already seeing a more inclusive approach to decision-making from those who so often rely on a top-down approach . . . The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the failure of this approach. Now is the time for everyone to sit-up and recognise the value of those working away on the ground” (source).

Projects

  • The Roots and Branches project: Incredible Edible has six Regional Facilitators across the UK, who work together as a team to share and distill the knowledge they have gained over the last decade of work with their local groups. The Facilitators provide face-to-face and phone assistance to both new and established Incredible Edible groups and organize regional gatherings for mutual support. Incredible Edible plans to develop a leadership program to support UK community leaders and to establish local and national connections/networks to give Incredible Edible groups more staying power.
  • Seeds to Solutions, a book from Incredible Edible: Published in 2021, this book serves not only as a tribute to Incredible Edible’s accomplishments, but also as a gardening guide and cookbook. It chronicles the organization’s successes along with advice, recipes, and anecdotes from Incredible Edible groups worldwide.

YOUTUBE ZGVgVgo-C30 A short film about Incredible Edible Todmorden shown at a Groundwork UK conference in 2012.

Friends & Partners

Finances

In 2017, the Big Lottery Fund (which distributes more than £600m of money from the National Lottery each year, and is now known as the National Lottery Community Fund) invested £500,000 in the Incredible Edible Network.

Origin Story

In 2007, Mary Clear planted edible plants and herbs in her front garden and put up a sign encouraging fellow townspeople to harvest and take home what they wanted. Rather than taking more than their fair share, she found that her neighbors hesitated to take too much for fear of seeming greedy, and it took them a while to get used to the idea.

In 2008, motivated by the recession, Pamela Warhurst and Mary Clear met with a group of volunteers in a Todmorden café to discuss their hopes for their town and establish Incredible Edible Todmorden, with the goal of creating “a kinder connected community” (source).

Without asking permission from local government, in their first acts of “guerilla gardening,” Incredible Edible began to dig up roadside verges that were neglected or had unattractive plantings and put in edible plants like mint, fennel, and rosemary.

In 2009, a group inspired by Incredible Edible Todmorden established Incredible Edible Ramsbottom; similar groups were then established in Wakefield, Prestwich, and Lambeth in 2010.

In 2012, in response to the movement’s popularity, the Incredible Edible Network was established to support new and growing groups across the globe. By 2016, there were more than 100 Incredible Edible groups in the UK and over 600 worldwide.

See Also

Sources