Food Hub is Official, it's Incredible!

High School Growing project.

Todmorden leads the way again with the high school food hub, which has received £494,785 from the Big Lottery fund.
The state of the art food and education centre will also be funded in part by Calderdale Council, Pennine Prospects and the Primary Care Trust.
This will open up a whole area of learning for the students with a new diploma course.
Pam says “IET has done a lot over the last couple of years to promote local food production, but at the heart of it all is the desire to give our children a better future, and what better way than this. It will become second nature for children to think about where their food comes from”.

The site these members of the IET team, the Able Project, High School staff and students are standing on, will soon be covered by polytunels, fish tanks and more.
Fish and food will be grown with a recirculating system, which means growing food will be sustainable in a controlled environment. IET, the school and Green Business network worked together for the lottery bid to make this happen.
“This will impact on the whole curriculum” said Helen Plaice soon to be Head Teacher, taking over from Patrick Ottley-Oconner, when he leaves in September to become head teacher at a new school in Manchester.
It is hoped the food hub will be ready by September next year, 2011 when the new Diploma in Environmental and Land-based Studies courses start.
Patrick said he was very proud to be associated with such an innovative team who are transforming learning.

New head of vocational learning, Paul Murray, explains to Nick, Alberto from the Able Project and the rest of us how important this is ensuring that work done in the classroom will be relevant to working life.
Tony Mulgrew, he of pulp kitchen fame, and catering manager at the school said what an exciting opportunity this was for the school and the community to work together, not to mention all the fresh produce that will be going into the kitchen.
From Nick’s experimental display and royal presentations as SDC champions….

to finding funding has been a long haul, but finally this summer land clearing will begin and the ground work will start.

Yet another first for our small market town.