5:30pm Friday 3rd July 2009
Kilnsey Show’s REAL Food and Farming exhibition is preparing its best showcase ever after receiving almost £10,000 from Awards for All.
The project is one of two in Craven and 43 in the Yorkshire and the Humber region to benefit from the £309,558 given out in the latest round of Lottery-funded awards.
REAL (Rural and Regeneration, Education and Environment, Agriculture and Arts, Local and Leisure) Food and Farming Limited will use its £9,890 to encourage closer links between the rural and urban districts and bring community cohesion to the district at the Kilnsey Show on Tuesday September 1.
The money will be used to provide a children’s education area with bread-making workshops, storytelling and a cookery theatre led by secondary school pupils.
The REAL organisation was established to support the Yorkshire Dales uplands and the communities and businesses that depend on them.
Christine Ryder, a committee member, said: “A vital part of the local economy is food production and part of our role is to help raise awareness of the passion and expertise that goes into producing and presenting the food that is available locally.
“We are trying to work with children and educate them about where food comes from and also on local food issues, thereby helping people in the rural hill farming areas.
“At the show, we will have an area dedicated to children’s education, where they can not only listen to master storyteller and local author Peter Murray, but also learn how to make bread with local flour and watch the cookery theatre.
“In the lead-up to the show, we will be taking produce from the farmers’ market into schools and teaching them cookery, which they will then demonstrate to others.”
The group will also work with secondary schools to hold cookery competitions using local produce at the Bolton Abbey Estate and will hold a lantern competition in a local primary school using unusual fruits and vegetables.
l The RSPB Craven and Pendle Local Group is also celebrating a windfall of Awards for All cash totalling £2,885.
The money will be used to reach more people, with the aim of teaching bird identification and increasing awareness of conservation issues.
The grant will allow the group, which has been running for 22 years, to buy equipment to show wildlife films and give a more professional image at talks and meetings.
Colin Straker, acting leader and talks programme organiser, said: “The grant is fantastic news as it means we can now buy the audiovisual equipment needed to put the show on the road and go out and talk to the community, be it schools, youth groups, senior citizens or disabled and disadvantaged adults.
“We will put together programmes about our group, about the work we’re doing at Long Preston Deeps – an area of the River Ribble – show some RSPB films and make a few of our own.”
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