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Greater Liverpool Food Alliance

Liverpool Vision

The development agency for Liverpool, Liverpool Vision, has expressed an interest in developing an Greater Liverpool Food Alliance, with a view to developing significant projects within the contexts of urban regeneration and job creation.

Following discussion with Liverpool Vision, Urbanag has developed this proposal.

Scope of project

This is a preliminary project and should be seen as more than a pilot but less than a full-scale project.

The ‘Alliance’ concept needs to be elaborated and tested by a trial scheme in order to produce a realistic organisational plan for the development and delivery of UA projects within Liverpool and the surrounding area. The objective is to build a framework for the successful creation and management of sub-regional urban agriculture. The trial scheme will develop a working partnership focussed on specific, representative and viable demonstrator activities.

We believe that a successful trial may well help Liverpool become a ‘centre of excellence’ in urban agriculture, and could lead to the formation of a Centre for Urban Agriculture similar in concept to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, Mid-Wales.

The key elements of the scheme will include:

  • Research
  • Identification of stakeholders and resources, including funding, land, and labour
  • Organisational planning and the identification of legal requirements and management and governance frameworks
  • ‘Buy-in’ – through the launch of demonstrator activities

Stage 1

The initial stage of the project will involve research into existing urban agriculture activities in Liverpool and the surrounding area, which will itself be a valuable exercise. We will look at:

  • current activities and participants
  • analysis of costs and benefits
  • the availability and classification of usable land and recuperable land
  • availability and accessibility of labour
  • requirements for and availability of materials
  • requirements for and providers of training
  • possible and practicable management/administration frameworks
  • options for funding, distribution, sales and revenue generation
  • options for developing and sustaining urban agriculture schemes

The preliminary project will investigate the possibilities for engaging stakeholders within the local ‘food industry’ and for developing strategic partnerships with development agencies, voluntary and community sector infrastructure organisations, traditional food production and agricultural organisations, and funders.

In particular, the project should explore the demands of management, capacity building and community engagement within the five immediate stakeholder communities – land owners (existing and potential), food growers/collectors, distributors, outlets, and consumers.

The starting point for this will be research to scope existing urban agriculture activities and issues in Liverpool and the surrounding area. By means of an informal survey and desk research, URBANAG will review the current level of understanding and the existence of usable data, and identify any gaps considered of relevance to potential stakeholders.

A summary report will be drafted and circulated to a core group of potential stakeholders who will be invited to form a project steering group to oversee the agenda for a wider stakeholders’ event and to oversee the work of a small sub-group tasked with developing a number of demonstrator activities based on the provision of new growing spaces in Liverpool.

Stage 2

We propose organising three demonstrator activities covering the public, private and third sectors. One of these will be put forward for possible funding under the “Greening The City; Demonstration Projects” fund from the Liverpool City Council. These demonstrator activites will involve two stages. The first stage involves the identification of usable and available growing spaces, through organisations willing to become actively involved, such as Liverpool Council, a local property developer and/or architectural practice, and the Diocese and/or Archdiocese of Liverpool. We envisage a five or six member team, with representatives from each of the landowner (or ’space-owner’) organisations, plus a representative of a major growers’ group and representatives from URBANAG and Liverpool Vision.

During the course of the project, we propose to identify the demonstrator activities, and their  organisational and operational requirements. We will need to explore issues of land tenure, land quality and maintenance, and access to distribution channels and labour.  We will also determine funding requirements and put funding arrangements in place. The objective will be to enter formal agreements with the agencies/organisations overseeing the demonstrator activities in order to make the essential growing spaces available for the demonstrator activities to continue beyond their first phase.

To achieve this in a limited period, we will need to engage ‘friendly’ players. We believe this can be done by approaching existing contacts within public, private and third sector organisations with a well argued proposal based on realistic figures and outputs. The benefits of engagement in an urban agriculture project are unequivocal, but it is still necessary to make the case.

The second phase of the demonstrator activities will take months to complete and will require the involvement of a range of community organisations as well as the five main stakeholder groups.

We will approach, among others, the local organic movement, trade unions representing farmers, agricultural workers, transport workers and shop workers, the NW TUC, Business in the Community, Liverpool CVS, the University of Liverpool, Liverpool PCT, The Mersey Care NHS Trust, and local unemployed resource centres and prison aftercare organisations with a view to:

1) recruiting steering group members

2) promoting the project and its objectives within stakeholder communities

We will produce promotional literature, approach local and regional media and launch a project website.

The steering group will oversee the first phase of the demonstrator activities, the development of an agenda for a participatory event, the organisation of the event, and the production and dissemination of the project’s final report. The event will allow us to identify the partners in the second phase of the demonstrator activities which will ultimately see produce grown, harvested, delivered and sold.

All Stage 2 activities will be initiated at the same time and will take place over a period of elapsed time of no more than 2 months*. These activities will cover:

Item 2. Identifying and bringing together members of a steering group tasked with overseeing the first phase of the demonstrator activities and the production of a draft vision statement; devising a conference agenda; generating interest and inviting attendees to a wider event

Item 3. Identifying and engaging key players among stakeholders for the purpose of inviting them to the steering group’s proposed event; publicise and promote conference to key players in order to ensure ‘buy-in’

Item 4. Organising and delivering the main event

Item 5. Writing, editing, publishing and distributing event outputs as part of on-going promotional strategy

The outputs from the participatory event will be:

  • a vision statement for the alliance
  • a conference report summarising the proceedings and setting out the terms of the second phase of the demonstrator activities with methods, goals, timetables, funding arrangements and financial projections
  • an organisational structure and constitution for the group managing the second phase of the demonstrator projects (this will be the alliance itself and will be formally constituted at the conference)

We propose to use the event to create a web-based ’social network’ for participants and we will produce and edit a video of the event for uploading to a video sharing website such as YouTube or Vimeo which can then be embedded into other websites. This will be covered by items 4 and 5 above.

Stage 3

Stage 3 will be the trial scheme itself. The assessment of the scheme will include guidelines for the organisation and management of future sustainable schemes. The scheme will also provide a number of promotional opportunities.

Risk factors

We have considered the risk factors involved in this plan and believe that risks can be avoided or minimised.

The main risk are these:

  • Project is too ambitious
    • Be prepared to adjust aims and activities to match resources
  • No key players can be found
  • The wrong key players are identified
  • The key players demonstrate no shared vision
    • Try again until suitable key players are found – the success of the preliminary project depends on involving the right people at the outset; they in turn will add solidity and momentum to the vision
  • The process fails to identify a suitable trial scheme
    • Pre-select possible trial schemes to be presented to key players
  • The selected trial scheme proves to be unsustainable
    • Sustainability should follow if trial schemes can be easily replicated
  • Funding is unavailable or insufficient
    • We need to be imaginative and flexible in sourcing funds for the preliminary project

Conclusion

The preliminary project will generate invaluable information and experience and will – if successful – create a model for future schemes which can be drawn together within a larger scale coordination project: a clearing house for various schemes, a ‘meeting place’ for stakeholders, a job creation and training support organisation, and a local ‘grid’ for facilitating the planning, distribution and sales of urban agriculture products.

The potential is enormous, but we should beware of setting too high a bar in the early days. We need to learn to crawl before we can jump.

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