Experiential climate learning with EIT Food in South London
So far, we’ve been the instigators of our tours and events, and we’ve been knocking on doors to find willing conspirators for our experiential climate learning events. So it was a welcome surprise to be approached by EIT Food – the world’s largest food innovation community, supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology – to curate an experience in London for their 20-strong operations team, which would connect them with big themes around community climate action.
We quickly saw the potential to collaborate with our longtime partners Pembroke House. Their perspective as facilitators of the Walworth Neighbourhood Food Model – an innovative, connected approach to supporting a just, sustainable and collaborative local food system – is a perfect fit. They would bring the First Hand skills curriculum to life in a way that would match EIT Food’s interests. We also know that Pembroke House’s appetite for learning as an organisation meant this would offer an opportunity for genuine mutual exchange.
With only a short period of time, we had 3 clear objectives that First Hand consistently targets:
- To connect the ideas and language of skills to the reality of people and places, ensuring that we’re all talking about the same thing
- To inspire – and to extend our collective imagination – through action-oriented examples
- To network towards further action – this might seem less relevant to an in-house team, but EIT Food are spread through multiple countries.
Hitting all these and we’re on our way to wider recognition of the critical role of the skills and infrastructures we need to change.
Understanding, inspiring and networking our way towards collective action
What, so what, now what?
You might recognise this as Driscoll’s model of reflective practice or as one of the many brilliant Liberating Structures. For First Hand it has proved a simple way to structure a walking workshop.
What we saw? Real-world examples of skills and infrastructures for change:
- learning spaces that build momentum for urban food system change at Walworth Garden and Pembroke House.
- projects that demonstrate success in engaging local communities and influence policy change towards food cultivation – such as Right To Grow.
- food actor mapping – a method developed by Pembroke House, now being shared with researchers at London South Bank University.
- community ownership models, like the local non-profit Fareshares – an ethical food coop that’s been around since 1988 and thriving in its small scale ever since.
So what do these examples mean? What are they teaching us?
When we step back from these local efforts and contexts, we can start to see how they might shape action elsewhere. Three lessons stood out:
- Stronger networks and partnerships help build the relationships that make collective action possible.
- Changing how decisions are made helps create space for new voices and fairer outcomes.
- Creating places to learn and lead change helps grow people’s confidence and capacity to act.
At First Hand, we focus on the skills that support collective action and also how they’re acquired. To scale these kinds of ideas and approaches, we also need to scale our understanding of what these skills are and widen access to them.
Now what? Learning new skills and creating new structures to work together
Systemic change can’t be done in isolation. Sustainability competences include the knowledge, skills and values we need to imagine and create a sustainable future – as well as to adapt to a changing present.
Here are the key sustainability competences at play in Walworth and why and how you can develop them for your own context:
- Collaboration
- The task: to work with others, across differences, towards a shared future.
- What it looks like:
- Building individual capability to create transparent, inclusive and community-driven processes.
- Building organisations’ and communities’ capacity to decide collectively, act collaboratively, and co-create solutions for sustainability.
- Building a society that contributes effectively to solving sustainability problems in local contexts.
- Leadership
- The task: to create the conditions for collective and collaborative action
- What it looks like:
- Building individuals’ confidence in their own potential to influence change
- Building community infrastructures for active participation in transformative change
- Building a society that centres participation, shares power, and acts collectively to shape a just and sustainable future.
These are not just our take, these ideas are reflected in GreenComp, the European Sustainability Competence Framework. As change is accelerating, the need for upskilling & reskilling throughout our working lives is also increasing. But current systems – formal and workplace education – often don’t meet that need.
