Why BLFF?
The Cause
For thousands of people across the city, Bristol’s vibrant food culture is a world away. Bristol Local Food Fund aims to create a new, more accessible source of funding for community food projects that are working to tackle food insecurity. To ensure the fund is more reponsive to the needs of communities that are so often excluded, we use participatory grantmaking (PGM) to design and distribute the funding.
Find out more about participatory grantmaking
The BLFF team and partners believe that following this approach will make the fund more effective and impactful because the people it aims to help will have a say in how it is delivered. By connecting the efforts already in place, and recruiting a citizens panel to choose which new projects to support, the fund will ensure that everyone can access affordable, healthy food.
Who are we?
The Bristol Local Food Fund is project run entirely by volunteers, most of whom live in Bristol and care about food, community, sustainability and making a positive difference. The project started in July 2020 during the first lockdown by Mike Lloyd-Jones, a Bristol resident who has worked and volunteered in Bristol’s third sector for over ten years.
Bristol Local Food Fund is working in partnership with Bristol City Council, Burges Salmon, Feeding Bristol, Quartet Community Foundation on behalf of Bristol City Funds, and Bristol Food Network.
The partners have been supporting the development through advice, support and connections to help the BLFF project develop. The money raised by the crowdfunder campaign - and any other donations to the project - will be held by Feeding Bristol and Quartet Community Foundation on behalf of the partnership.
The BLFF team have engaged with many community food projects in Bristol, to understand their needs and the needs of their community to ensure that BLFF is following an approach that is helpful and meeting their needs and the needs of their respective communities.
What are we aiming to achieve?
We ran a crowdfunder campaign in November 2021, and raised over £60,000
from the people of Bristol.
In Summer 2022, we recruited seven people with lived experience of food insecurity to our Citizens Panel, to discuss, design and decide on the grant-making process for Bristol Local Food Fund.
The panel members came from diverse backgrounds and were representative of many areas of Bristol that are most heavily impacted by food insecurity.
The panel members were remunerated for their time at the equivalent rate of the real living wage and were professionally facilitated and supported through the design process.
The first round of BLFF funding opened on October 4th 2022, until November 14th at 9am.
Click here to find out more and apply for funding (redirects to the Quartet Community Foundation website)
The BLFF team will connect community food projects, partners, stakeholders and other relevant organisations in the city with the panel to ensure that a breadth of knowledge and information is shared, and that all voices are heard, fairly and openly.
