Lambeth residents get social farming boost from new funding
Hundreds of Lambeth residents will learn how to grow their own food, make friends and improve their health – thanks to new funding for a social action charity.
Almost a decade ago, Loughborough Junction Action Group (LJAG) began turning a patch of vacant open space between Brixton, Herne Hill and Camberwell into a thriving community farm.
Now, the charity has been awarded £84,500 by City Bridge Trust to help it bring more people to Loughborough Farm to learn how to grow, cook and eat their own food.
Loughborough Junction resident Karen Hooper has been a volunteer at the farm since it started in the summer of 2013.
She now leads the farm’s Wish You Were Here project, an informal social prescribing project which links the farm with local health professionals.
She said: “I am inspired by what’s been achieved at Loughborough Farm since we started growing in 100 builders’ bags in 2013. We have all been on a journey, testing at times, but we have created a real sense of community.
“I hope Wish You Were Here, our informal social prescribing project, can continue to join the dots with GPs and other well-being networks to invest in the health of our community, but we need people to share our vision and invest in us.”
The grant will fund 100 growing sessions a year plus horticultural and healthy eating workshops and outreach sessions at local housing estates to encourage residents to grow food on their own balconies.
Participants in sessions at the farm get to take home fruit and vegetables grown there, while surplus produce is used at the neighbouring Platform Café, a community café with an employability programme, run by the charity, which is also benefitting from the grant.
More information about Loughborough Junction Action Group and its farm is at www.loughboroughjunction.org
Pictured top: Caiden Quinlan and Joshua Bola were among children from Grove Adventure Playground, another LJAG project, who came to the farm for a seed-sowing and harvesting workshop (Picture: LJAG)
