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UK: Growing together: how city farms have nurtured a generation of urban kids

‘A deeply tranquil place’: working with the pigs at Ouseburn in Newcastle. Photograph: Alex Telfer/The Observer

Patrick Barkham meets some of the early pioneers of urban farming in the UK and hears how the battles faced half a century ago are very similar to the ones being waged today

By Patrick Barkham
The Guardian
Oct 30, 2022

Excerpt:

The first city farm, in Kentish Town, was pure “serendipity”, says one of its co-founders, David Powell. London’s postwar population shrank and, by the early 1970s, whole streets of empty terraces and derelict warehouses were commonplace. Space was easy to find and utilised by groups such as Interaction, a community theatre charity that in 1972 rented a disused wood yard from Camden council.

They discovered a row of Victorian stables on the site and, with characteristic creativity, borrowed some ponies and created the only indoor riding arena in London not owned by the Queen. “My father-in-law was a farmer and he donated a couple of calves and some Silkie chickens, and very quickly we acquired a free-running menagerie,” says Powell. A pub conversation led to a crocodile of pensioner-volunteers walking to the site to dig community gardens. Kentish Town city farm was born.

The founders were not publicity shy and other inner city groups were soon inspired to set up similar farms in Sheffield, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle, Birmingham and elsewhere, bringing greenery to derelict post-industrial cityscapes and offering young people a chance to grow food and work with animals.

It’s simple. We’re a place for growing plants, animals and, most of all, people
Over the years, many of these improbably tiny community farms have been starved of funds but, against the odds, they have endured and evolved. Fifty years on, despite a complete transformation of most inner cities, urban farms continue to perform, as Powell puts it, “the wonderful work of putting animals and people and green things together and to see what magic comes out of that”.

Read the complete article here.