The latest exhibition from We Feed The UK celebrates women-led initiatives producing nature-friendly food for Scotland. Renowned photographer Sophie Gerrard has studied two ground-breaking examples:
- Lauriston Farm, a 100-acre site near Edinburgh run by a majority-women workers cooperative as a local response to the lack of affordable, healthy food.
- Nikki Yoxall of Grampian Graziers, using native cattle to restore the species- and carbon-rich pasture in decline across the Cairngorms.
Their efforts are examples of local urban and rural responses to global issues of climate change, food security and biodiversity loss.
Sons inherit Scottish farms 85% of the time, yet over half of the UK’s family farm workers are women. The Scottish government’s own Women in Agriculture Taskforce concluded that their contribution can be “undervalued, downplayed or simply unseen”. This exhibition aims to change that.
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Exhibition open 27 April – 31 May 2024.
Launch on 27 April 3-5pm, featuring a live performance of specially commissioned poem ‘The Seed Kist’ by Iona Lee. Part of Sustain’s UK-wide Good To Grow Week. Free.
Panel discussion and exhibition tour on 11 May 2-4.30pm, featuring Nikki Yoxall from Grampian Graziers, Lisa Houston from Lauriston Farm, photographer Sophie Gerrard and Sinéad Fortune from the Seed Sovereignty UK and Ireland Programme. Chaired by Katie Revell, co-producer of Farmerama Radio. Free.
About We Feed The UK
We Feed The UK is a national storytelling campaign pairing award-winning photographers and poets with the UK’s most inspiring food producers. These radical collaborations are raising awareness of the food system’s potential to positively address climate change, the biodiversity crisis and social injustice.
“70% of the UK is farmland. The potential for this to become the place where we support biodiversity, sequester carbon and address so many of the other problems we are facing is enormous. The arts have the power to speak to the heart. Apathy is such a big barrier, and hope activates.”
– Co-Director of The Gaia Foundation, Rowan Phillimore
Coordinated by The Gaia Foundation, We Feed The UK unites over 40 partners from the environment and arts sectors to galvanise new support for nature-friendly, community-centred, carbon-sequestering food production.
The campaign has commissioned ten photographers and ten Hot Poets to tell ten stories, ranging from multi-generational, Black-led growing projects in London, to a majority-women workers cooperative in Edinburgh, via sustainable fishing along the South Coast.
Arts partners including the Martin Parr Foundation, Royal Photographic Society and Belfast Exposed will host exhibitions and events until April 2025. Environment partners including the Soil Association, Land Workers’ Alliance and Nature Friendly Farming Network will direct citizens and farmers to local actions they can take in support of the movement.
The food producers featured are beacons of hope in a farming landscape dominated to-date by Brexit, the cost-of-living crisis and climate chaos, where less than half of our biodiversity remains. We Feed The UK brings positive examples of resilience to the table, of flourishing wildlife, healthy food and community cohesion.
Northumberland’s Stuart Johnson, Soil Farmer of the Year 2023 and subject of We Feed The UK’s November exhibition, said: “We Feed The UK is important in getting positive stories to the public – the current vilification of farmers needs to stop. There are small pockets of us trying to be better, which We Feed The UK can help the consumer see and understand, whilst also offering hope to farmers stuck in an imperfect system. This project proves that there are other ways to do it that can not only enhance biodiversity and battle climate change, but also bring people together and improve financial performance. Everyone wins and that story needs to be told.”
