Here’s what some reviewers of our 2017-2018 Annual Report said:
“Enlightening and disturbing: an urgent wake-up call for us to take these issues seriously, talk about them, raise awareness and influence policy-makers.”
“Clear communication of a hard-hitting message.”
“The messages are so compelling. How will each of us develop the emotional resilience to absorb this report and not be overwhelmed by the complexity and seemingly hopelessness of the situation, and start working towards setting a longer-term strategy and approach that can ‘make the inevitable evitable’?”
What can the Birmingham Food Council do to help “work towards a longer term strategy”?
This:
Page 1 of the Annual Report: Horizon scanning & The Game
- Say it as it is, as in Back from the Future, our horizon scanning report.
- Engage socio-political decision-makers in grappling with the challenges they will soon be facing — in a fun, engaging, safe environment, such as The Game: Nine Meals from Anarchy?
- Put the case for and collaborate with others to set up a UK Food Security Institute.
Page 2 of the Annual Report: The lack of local policy decision-making
- Seek to influence Birmingham City Council and the WMCA to understand and respond to the challenges of ensuring all our citizens have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food supplies
- Whilst also pointing out the economic and social benefits of so doing, as indicated in this infographic:
Page 3 of the Annual Report: The governance challenge
- Help enable local socio-political decision-makers to recognise the unique role they can play in taking seriously the scale, complexity and importance of the food network system for the social and economic well-being of the population in the West Midlands.
- Support and inform these local decision-makers to face down the governance challenges of global vested interests having detrimental effects on our local as well as national social and economic capital.
- Work towards having key products makers (‘drug-food’ manufacturers and products that carry standard-rate VAT) declassified as being in the food and drink sector, and putting forward having a Code of Practice for these companies similar to that for tobacco companies.
Page 4 of the Annual Report: Action Research & the Narrativium projects
- Continue to work with local communities and other collaborating partners in carrying out our Action Research programme.
- Set up Narrativium projects to engage the upcoming generation in Birmingham in designing engaging arts performances and installations to communicate important messages about our food supply network.
Page 5 of the Annual Report: Food safety, assurance & integrity — and a framework to better understand the complexity of the food network
- Encourage the City Council to have a ‘Birmingham Standard’ to assure the safety and integrity of their meals provision.
- Continue our project to raise Food Hygiene Ratings in food premises where people have no option but to eat meals prepared for them; i.e. nurseries, schools, care homes, hospitals and HMP Birmingham.
- Design info-graphics to enable people to better comprehend the scale and complexity of the food network, as in this update version of the PMCC (producer-multiplier-controller-consumer) framework:
If you would like to comment on this Annual Report, please do so.