Brickyard: Grow, Cook, Eat is Everton in the Community and Feeding Liverpool’s new community garden, which brings sustainable, creative urban-growing into the heart of L4.

Feeding Liverpool and Everton in the Community partnered with Conal Studio to bring the Brickyard: Grow, Cook, Eat show garden from its first showing at the RHS Tatton Park flower show, to Liverpool, relocating it to Everton in the Community’s purpose-built mental health and wellbeing hub, The People’s Place – forming a lasting legacy for the city.

Brickyard at the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show

Brickyard showcases the best of inner city urban growing, with the design influenced by traditional brickyards that run alongside thousands of UK terraced streets. It responds to the limitations of awkward inner-city growing spaces and looks at how we can adapt them for modern living. Factors such as tenancy agreements, environmental concerns, tradition, and cost have a massive impact on how people utilise these spaces. The aim is to inspire new ways of thinking, by developing solutions for people that they may not have thought of.

Brickyard show garden, designed by Conal McGuire from Conal Studio, was awarded the highest honour at the RHS Flower Show: a Gold Medal alongside the award for Best Terrace and Slim Space Garden and The People’s Choice award.

During the show Brickyard hosted live demonstrations from Andrea Ku of B 4 Biodiversity. Andrea demonstrated how the gardens unique grow-frames enable people to cultivate food organically, in awkward outdoor spaces at home, or in shared gardens. The growing frames demonstrated the benefits of companion planting and will house bespoke habitats for rare species of bumblebee and other wildlife.

“Seeing this garden through from concept to reality has been a wonderful opportunity. There have been challenges along the way but knowing that Brickyard will go on to have a meaningful legacy back in Liverpool after Tatton makes it all worthwhile. I would like to thank Feeding Liverpool and Everton in the Community for their involvement, these two charities are close to my heart and represent some of our cities finest and kindest. I hope that Brickyard encourages people to boost urban biodiversity and inspires them to develop their own awkward outdoor spaces.” Conal McGuire at www.conalstudio.com

Brickyard at home in L4

In August, 2023, Brickyard was brought back to Everton in the Community’s purpose-built mental health hub, The People’s Place.

The People’s Place is the first purpose-built mental health and wellbeing hub attached to a Premier League football club and houses the charity’s 15 mental health projects and provides wellbeing activities alongside educational and employment support. The garden will become the latest addition to the Goodison Campus, offering a safe space for staff and service users to host one-on-one therapy sessions, community events, group counselling and community outreach work as well as giving residents access to homegrown food and equipping them with the skills to grow their own produce.

Jones, Senior Programme Manager at www.evertoninthecommunity.org commented:

“Everton in the Community is thrilled to partner with Feeding Liverpool and Conal Studio to bring ‘Brickyard: Grow, Cook, Eat’ to The People’s Place. As a charity, we pride ourselves on acting upon the needs of the local community and improving access to homegrown produce is one that must be addressed to help tackle issues of food insecurity.

“This is a great opportunity for us, which will allow the community and our participants to access a green growing space and take up gardening to help aid their wellbeing. The garden will also help to support the delivery of our programmes and enhance what we can offer at The People’s Place, so we are honoured for it to be placed with us and continue Brickyard’s legacy.”

The garden is accessible to Feeding Liverpool’s network as they bring organisations and residents together to deliver engagement activities around Good Food For All, with both Feeding Liverpool and Everton in the Community supporting to Liverpool’s Good Food Plan.

In Liverpool more than 1 in 3 adults are food insecure – with food being a source of worry, and households reducing the quality and quantity of food they are eating, skipping meals and for some going hungry. Many residents also do not have access to their own green growing spaces. Liverpool’s Good Food Plan seeks to develop ‘food citizenship’ through enabling residents to have the power and tools to shape their own food environments. Urban food growing is a foundation stone of this vision. The partnership developed through ‘Brickyard: Grow, Cook, Eat’ will have numerous benefits for residents including encouraging healthy eating, a sense of wellbeing and improving food security.

Our Director Dr Naomi Maynard shared:

“Feeding Liverpool is delighted to partner with Conal Studio and Everton in the Community to bring ‘Brickyard: Grow, Cook, Eat’ to Liverpool. Good food is the foundation of strong communities in our city, bringing people from all different walks of life together. Our hope is that Brickyard will inspire urban growing in unusual spaces across Liverpool alongside being a focal point for good food in Everton.”

Healthy Start is a national scheme that provides help for eligible families and those who are pregnant to buy healthy food and milk.

Healthy Start includes a pre-paid card allocated £4.25 per week (£8.50 during the first year of a child’s life) to be spent on milk, fruit, and vegetables, infant formula, and access to Healthy Start vitamins. If a participant remains eligible from 10 weeks pregnant until their child is age 4, £1,200 could be accessed via the scheme.

However, since the transition to a digitalised scheme, uptake has reduced to just 65% across Liverpool with £758,521.24 going unclaimed in 2021.

Increasing awareness and uptake of the Healthy Start Scheme across Liverpool is crucial as it could make a significant difference to some of Liverpool’s lowest income households, improving the quality and quantity of good food their household consumes, which is especially important during pregnancy and early years development.

Become a Community Healthy Start Champion

Feeding Liverpool offer regular free introductory training to The Healthy Start Scheme, with trainees becoming Community Healthy Start Champions, able to promote the scheme in their communities.

This training is aimed at people in Liverpool who support pregnant women and parents/carers with young children aged 0–4 years, including:

• Voluntary sector volunteers or staff members – including organisations that support families through the Holidays Activities and Food Programme

• Children centre staff, health-care related workers, and wellbeing professionals

Join the 187 people who have already completed this training.

View our event page here to see when the next training will be taking place or watch our online training below.

For more information about The Healthy Start Scheme visit including Feeding Liverpool’s research ‘A Healthy Start for Liverpool’ click here

Since 2021 Feeding Liverpool has led Liverpool’s Good Food Plan and listening to people across Liverpool as they have answered this question: “What does Good Food mean to you?”

For many, it means eating our cultural food. Feeding Liverpool have also heard how the traditions surrounding cultural food are important to our wellbeing through our sense of shared identity, community, and heritage.

This year, working with local photographer Emma Case and community groups across Liverpool, Feeding Liverpool have begun building a collection of food stories through photographs and interviews.

Naomi Maynard, Director of Feeding Liverpool says:

“At Feeding Liverpool we believe that local people should have the power and resources to shape their local food environments and the food system as a whole. Over the last two years we have heard from residents how good food can make us feel empowered, dignified, connected, joyful, and nostalgic, and that it is important that everyone in our city can enjoy good food. Good Food; Our Food brings to life good food stories from communities across Liverpool in a powerful and provocative way, whilst inviting each of us to join the conversation to explore what good food means to you.”

Photographer and Feeding Liverpool’s Creative Engagement Officer Emma Case says:

“It’s been an absolutely incredible time getting to know all the wonderful people and families who have been involved in this project. I’m so grateful for them all. Their stories are rich and powerful, and I love that they are being shared. Partnering with Feeding Liverpool has meant this project has been for a greater cause and as a photographer, you can’t get any better than your work having this kind of impact.”

Dagmara Wojciechowicz, Manager of Merseyside Polonia and partner on Good Food; Our Food, says:

“We are incredibly honoured to partner with Feeding Liverpool and Emma Case on this event. I feel that our organisations share a passion for addressing issues that are affecting our local communities. Having access to culturally appropriate food is a necessity shared between all community members, universal to their country of origin. We are pleased that together we can support and advocate for wider community groups who found home here in Liverpool and Merseyside. We are such a welcoming city and this event is all about Scouse hospitality and all of our neighbours who chose this city to call home.”

In May 2023 we launched the Good Food; Our Food travelling photos and story exhibition. This year the exhibition will travel around local communities groups.

Join our mailing list to find out where you can view the traveling  exhibition.

If you would like the Good Food; Our Food exhibition to come to your community contact Emma on [email protected]