Context 165 - August 2020

C O N T E X T 1 6 5 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 23 Food and drink Water, wild weather and radicalism have always run through this place. It is a town rooted in the protest and non-conformism of the 1840s, where the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire felt a long way from the law and where there were passionate, ordinary people wanting to do things differently. It is still a place where the ordinary people are activists, albeit a quieter type of activism now, where the revolution has been happening from its historic buildings and through promoting open-source food to wrap this town in kindness. Back in 2008, the financial crisis bit deeply into the local economy.Todmorden is not an affluent area and most of its people work in the service industry or manufacturing, so job losses had hit hard. People were falling through the cracks, with real poverty, including food poverty, rife. The schools were failing, there were empty shops and public money was in short supply. A group of people got together to think about how the community could help itself. They wondered if it could be done without recourse to public funds or funders. These people had originally met as volunteers helping to cut the grass, tend the borders and bring some life back to the then Working on the canal bed Tending the Community College beds roofless, redundant Unitarian Church, being cared for by the Historic Chapels Trust. The idea that germinated and grew was one of an activated community caring for its envi- ronment and each other, united through food growing in unused spaces, and in communal eating. The idea that grew was that by turning ornamental beds over to growing food and using the scraps of green space beside buildings, everybody in the town could help, and everyone could share in the harvest. A community united through growing and eating. Gradually the teamof volunteers grew. Everyone at Incredible Edible, including the directors, are unpaid volunteers. The number of repurposed green spaces grew and the seeds in those spaces grew too, with fruit growing outside the health centre, vegetables growing outside the police station, and welcoming, pickable herb beds and a vegetable plot for the commuters at the train station to gather as they went to and from work. The town has herb beds, berry bushes, food-to- share plots, edimentals (edible ornamentals, like fuchsia), an apothecary garden and a butterfly garden. The Incredible Farm, a social enterprise spin-off, has three commercial polytunnels, 160 fruit trees, beehives, ducks and chickens. There are more than 300 Incredible Edible sister projects across the world, and a whole new area of ‘vegetable tourism’ has grown on the back of this movement. A traffic of inspiration, visits and cross-pollinating know-how goes back and forth between the projects, each one finessing how they work and what they grow for their communities and countries. As the UK has gone into lockdown, the role of Incredible Edible inTodmorden has changed, and something new has been added to the growing and the community work. The spectre