HARD to credit in these blizzard-lashed days that we are barely a week away from a Spring Fiesta, an all-day Manchester food festival with a difference, to be held at Sadler’s Yard and PLANT in Hanover Street on Saturday, March 10.
Global food waste campaigners Feedback and Real Junk Food Manchester are holding a family-friendly “alternative food market” and inviting Manchester to create a meal collectively, using surplus food that otherwise would have been wasted while dancing to beats from a local DJs. Feedback are famous for their ‘Disco Soup’ events.
It all sounds a fun way to focus on the urgent need to build a food system that nourishes the planet instead of depleting it. Fact – globally, around one-third of all food produced is never eaten, a colossal waste of the precious environmental resources that went into producing it. Meanwhile one third of the UK’s poorest families are skipping meals because they cannot afford to put food on the table.
So what can we expect at the Spring Fiesta, which is being held?
11am to 4pm: Celebration of diverse local food and community organisations, with a free lunch made from surplus fresh ingredients, a family friendly “alternative market” in Sadler’s Yard, kids activities such as “make a Mother’s Day gift”, a host of workshops for all ages and film screenings.
Evening: From 6pm the party with a purpose heats up at Spring Fiesta’s ‘disco chop’ at open design studio PLANT NOMA. Help save hundreds of kilos of food by co-creating a free feast from fresh, top quality produce that would have otherwise been wasted. Bop while you chop to classic disco, funk and soul tunes from local DJ’s and enjoy a bar stocked with waste-busting craft beers from Runaway Brewery and Toast Ale, and local ciders made for surplus produce.
Spring Fiesta, Sadler’s Yard and PLANT, Hanover Street, NOMA, Manchester M60 0AB Saturday, March 10, 11am-11pm. Free. Register online here.