the Beswick & Openshaw Community Food & Farm Project:
"It's a Garden, but its now much more than that...."
Formed in late 2013 using disused land owned by Church of the Resurrection & St. Barnabas, (Eastlands, Manchester), the local community began working to clear the area and turn it into a safe, welcoming and inclusive community green space for people and supported groups to socialise, share existing and learn new skills and grow their own food. We have built many new relationships in the community whilst connecting with other third sector, social enterprise and charitable partners as well as the business community.
In a short space of time the group has become very recognisable and won a number of local and regional awards for its community based horticulture activities as well as endorsements for its high standard of work. The group has received a number of enquiries to provide support services to other local bodies such as schools and colleges, public spaces, charitable and religious bodies as well as individual local residents. Other activities are now starting to blossom from the core group, many of which are hoped to become social enterprises in their own right which in turn support the central body. One of these is 'Barnabas Environment & Land Management' (@BarnabasEnviro) which are are now crowd funding for.
Our other developing projects include:
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Barnabas Bee Project (@BarnabasBees) - a community bee project providing training and employment enterprise on site of St Barnabas churchyard,
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Men's Shed Manchester (@MensShedMcr) - East Manchester craft, activity and support group aimed predominately but not exclusively at older aged men; based on the Worldwide 'Men in Shed's' movement
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Beswick Beers (@BeswickBeer) - creating craft beers using ingredients we grow on the community garden and or forage
