From 3rd – 9th August 2026, the first annual Bean Festival was held in Liverpool.
From its inception to the closing all-day event at Kensington Fields, Liverpool Bean Festival 2026 brought people together from across the city in a community-led food celebration. The event lineup for the week included a growing workshop at the Green Street Community Garden attached to Vauxhall Health Centre, a family cooking demonstration at Kirkdale Community Shop and a full day of festivities – a programme that was facilititated by a Community Investment Fund grant from LCVS, local growers, caterers, community organisations, artists and a large number of volunteers. Alongside these community events, Food For Thought also ran a series of Holiday Activity Fund activities, which helped to engage youth groups with the Festival over the summer holidays.
Why Beans?
Beans are a nutritious, climate-friendly and economical source of protein that can easily be grown at home. They also have a strong place in many communities across Liverpool, where different varieties feature in a wide range of recipes.
Rich in fibre, protein and micronutrients, but low in fat, beans are increasingly being promoted through public health campaigns as an important part of a healthy diet. At the same time, producing beans generates far fewer CO2 emissions than animal products, making them a simple way to reduce the environmental impact of our diets and help mitigate the disastrous effects of man-made climate change that have been so self-evident this summer.
Beans also make economic sense. As food price inflation continues to squeeze families’ ability to purchase meat and meat-free alternatives, beans remain a cheap, everyday food with plenty of variety.
And there is another reason to grow them. Beans have particular qualities as plants, helping to fix nitrogen in the soil in which they grow. With plenty of varieties suited to the UK climate, they can be grown at home and harvested throughout the summer and autumn.
Why A Festival?
Last year’s Engage Liverpool’s seminars asked the question: ‘Liverpool’s Food Culture: Have We Got One?’ Undoubtedly, the last 50 years of food reform – the monopolising power of the supermarkets, attendant closures of local independent food retailers, housing development on arable land, and the concentration of cash cropping by the farmers that remain – have closed down spaces for food culture to flourish. Since the 2008 financial crash, austerity policies and the protracted cost-of-living crisis, communities that engage in community food projects are much more likely to be responding to a deficit – rather than having the celebration of growing, cooking and eating as their main aim.
That is not to say that there is no appetite for such work. Indeed, the enduring popularity of food entertainment shows, celebrity chefs and social media food accounts point to the continued relevance of food to our cultural imaginaries. Certain food cultures also still thrive, with the holy month of Ramadan, for example, being a time of reflection, fasting and communal eating in Muslim communities. The challenge for people operating in our food system today is how to create spaces where this desire for connection with our food can break out of privatised, digital spaces (often geared toward individual consumption) and build cultural engagement with food that is social, accessible and sustainable.
Liverpool Bean Festival 2026 drew inspiration from projects such as the Social Pickle in Sheffield, who run an annual Pickle Festival. Sat within an ecology of community food support groups, Pickle Festival is a celebration of old traditions of preservation that have been used by working people throughout time. Closer to home, Alchemic Kitchen CIC runs a mobile greengrocer called the Queen of Greens – this creates possibilities for people living in food deserts to have a connection to locally-grown food and greengrocers they know – and organises group cooking events on Apple Day.
By creating a fun, educational and creative programme that was completely free and held at community venues, Liverpool Bean Festival 2026 sought to engage with people where they live. Central to the success of the festival was support from local artists who designed promotional materials and ran activities throughout the week. The organisation of the Festival iteself was carried out by Feeding Liverpool, the three involved community venues and regular, open meetings (both online and in-person) that allowed communities to have a say in the week’s agenda. Community volunteers also stepped up to make banners and decorations, set up venues, perform live acts, welcome people into the spaces and pour their love for beans into the events. On a shoestring budget, community efforts helped the Festival to reach over 200 people in total.
What Next?
The popularity of Bean Festival 2026 illustrates two important points:
- The terrain of culture is a vital site for food system activists to intervene, framing issues around food in positive terms that people can connect with.
- Those interventions are best built from the bottom-up.
It was evident that the people involved in the Festival played a huge role in making it what it was, and that its success was due to the wellsprings of talent, energy and creativity communities have when they are allowed to set the agenda.
Already, talks are afoot for Liverpool Bean Festival 2027, and there are many ways in which people can start getting involved:
- To help evidence future funding bids, Feeding Liverpool have set up an anonymous evaluation survey for people who people who attended Bean Festival 2026 to fill out.
- Feeding Liverpool have also created a fundraising page for anyone who like to make a donation towards Liverpool Bean Festival 2027.
- The Liverpool Bean Festival can be followed on Instagram, where the latest updates and events will be shared.
- Samir, Feeding Liverpool’s Community Development Lead, can be contacted by anyone who is wishing to organise their own celebration of beans or another food of their choice.
