Since Bristol Food Union launched they have raised £30,700 in donations from the public! Thank you for your donations.
They have also delivered more than 7,000 meals to frontline communities and NHS services.
Paid £28,000 (£4 per meal) from the crowd-funder to Bristol’s independent restaurants and suppliers to help produce these meals.
Delivered more than 700 weekly provisions boxes to foster-care leavers across the city, plus hosted online cook-alongs to help them use the ingredients
Donated chefs and kitchens staff to the Caring in Bristol ‘Cheers Drive’ initiative, which has produced 35,000 meals for Bristol’s homeless citizens to-date.
During May Rob del Naja’s one-off art “Fire Sale” in support of the Bristol Food Union exceeded its target, with the sale of 1037 prints in ten days generating in excess of £100k to feed frontline Bristol communities. The success of the collaboration will allow the Food Union to continue to supply free-meals to Bristol’s most vulnerable people for a further 6 weeks.
However, Del Naja (3D) and the food union – a collective of restaurants, food businesses and community organisations that came together across-sectors to ensure that the city of Bristol was fed during the acute stages of the Covid-19 crisis – have issued a joint warning that the project and its funding model must now be adapted, if it is to continue to ensure that those most in need of good quality, free or heavily discounted food are not abandoned as the pandemic peak is passed.
The Food Union now plans to take a dual focus; prioritizing frontline communities across the city, where sudden changes in circumstances have led to a spike in food poverty and a huge increase in the use of food banks – whilst also ensuring that frontline NHS workers, for whom the issue has been primarily logistical rather than financial, can still access nutritious, discounted food.
Bristol artist, Rob del Naja said:
“I’d like to thank everyone for their generous contribution to this project. Live music and large-scale social gatherings are something we will obviously have to wait a little longer for, but in the meantime, it feels good to finally do an honest day’s work! Public interventions during the first 12 week of the pandemic have been amazing. But public philanthropy is not the long-term solution to this complex situation, and people have their own livelihoods to worry about. The COVID 19 pandemic has given me an insight into food security and local vulnerabilities in the supply chain, and an appreciation of the perilous position the hospitality sector now finds itself in.”
Robert Del Naja
Food Union organiser, Aine Morris said:
We’re thrilled with the success of our fundraising activities in recent weeks, but government and regional councils now have an obligation to ensure their citizens can access good food at reasonable prices in the longer-term. We’re increasingly concerned about those newly affected by food poverty and believe that this group of citizens will only expand in the coming months. We urgently need to prioritise the delivery of a National Food Plan which ensures resilient UK food supply chains, and recognises the powerful role that the food and hospitality sector could play in helping to keep communities well fed.
Bristol Food Union, organiser Aine Morris
A full sales and costs breakdown for the artwork project can be found at fire-sale.store
A national food plan is the only way to ensure we feed the vulnerable
For more information on the feed the frontline initiative – https://bristolfoodunion.org/feed-a-frontline-worker/