What we do…
Cegin y Bobl runs transformational food education programmes developed and delivered by some of Wales’ best cooks, growers and food experts. Our work builds on the successful ‘Cook24’ programme run by Coleg Sir Gar in 2023-24.
We believe that food addresses so many of the difficult issues we face today: diet-related diseases, isolation and anxiety, and the crisis in farming, biodiversity and the cost of living.
Food Discovery
This in-depth 6-week course takes children on a journey, exploring food through practical cooking. Kids are given agency, responsibility and respect in the classroom, kitchen and during farm visits.
Children, teachers and parents have reported improved school attendance and behaviour, increased engagement during lessons, a willingness from children to try new foods, a sense of pride and achievement, and families cooking from scratch more often at home.
“I’ve learned a lot, and have tried cooking more at home. I even ate stuff I would not normally try!”
Food Leadership
Our food leadership programme gives teachers, school staff and community leaders a deeper understanding of food education and sustainable food. It teaches strategies to integrate food and cooking into the curriculum or community activities. Over 4-days of interactive practical and theoretical sessions, we empower teaching staff and community leaders to develop their own school or community food plan.
During the course, Food Leaders:
- Explore ways of bringing the subject of food into an existing curriculum or activity
- Learn how to build partnerships and collaborations within the local or school community
- Understand how to establish a food action team within the school or community, to embed the ideas and practice
- Get help to develop a sustainable food culture within their school or community
- Become part of a positive, exciting and critical approach to the challenges of climate change and food security.
Course participants leave with the confidence, passion, skills and techniques to use food as a transformational learning and engagement tool within schools.
“Thank you for creating and bringing this to us. There will be positive action in our communities just from these last few days. I really hope you can share this with as many people as possible!”
Home Cooking
We run home cookery courses for diverse groups - from food banks users to parents and community groups. These 6-week courses give everyone the confidence and motivation to cook healthy, affordable and delicious food from scratch. People have reported coming away with a completely different outlook on food.
A home cookery course covers:
- Cooking from scratch using basic ingredients.
- Meal planning, including budgeting.
- Minimising food waste.
“By the time they’d finished the course, 6 out of the 8 participants were no longer needing food bank support”
Further and Higher Education
One of our key aims as we establish Cegin y Bobl is to look to the future – through investing in education. Alongside teaching community leaders and schoolkids we need to raise the next generation of food leaders, policymakers and passionate chefs and farmers in Wales – so we are working with fantastic partners to deliver exciting, real education in food and farming.
Demand for holistic, high-level education in food systems, food leadership, food production and regenerative farming is high, with no current market leader in the UK HE or FE landscape. The need for graduates and trainees with an in-depth knowledge both of the food system and of real-world solutions to global problems is already acute and will only grow in coming years as climate and geopolitical shocks multiply.
Watch this space as we develop our initial offering…