Nottingham’s 2010 Free Food Giveaways

After 6 successful year, the Council House have refused to host further Vegan Festivals, as the 2000 people attracted to the event cause ‘too much wear and tear’, so a mass vegan free food giveaway is taking place at multiple locations across the City today, Saturday 11th December. (Look for the green tea shirts!)

January

After the 2009 East Midlands Vegan Festival, an informal meet and greet was held at the Alley Café to encourage support for campaigns associated with Nottingham Animal Rights. It was agreed that the free food giveaway campaign should be re-started, to run on a monthly basis, together with Veggies Catering Campaign and the Vegan Society.

February - first giveaway of the year

The first 2010 giveaway took place outside McDonald’s, with food kindly donated by supporting businesses, including:
- Beanies’ Health Foods (Fry’s Polony and Sausage Rolls).
- Dotty’s Cafe (sadly now closed)
Volunteers also made vegan pizza.

March - for the UK Animal Rights Spring Gathering

The March giveaway took place as part of the 2010 Animal Rights Spring Gathering, hosted by Veggies and the Sumac Centre in Nottingham. This took place outside McDonald’s, with food donated by:
- Veggies Catering Campaign (cake & Veggies burgers)
- Screaming Carrot Vegan Bakery (pastries)
Volunteers made cupcakes and vegan pizza, and hot veggie-sausage samples were cooked on a camping stove at the giveaway.

April - for the International Vegan Bake Sale

The first pre giveaway cookery skill-share had a cake theme for Vegan Baking Week. Volunteers learned to make a range of recipes, including: vegan pastries, treacle tarts, black forest gateaux, chocolate cupcakes, lemon drizzle cake and carrot cake. These cakes were then distributed at the following day’s giveaway. Cake was provided by Veggies.

Several people requested recipes and gave their email addresses, so immediately after this event a dedicated address for the giveaways was set up ( nottsfreefood@gmail.com), a recipe book was compiled and it was decided to hold cookery skillshares on a monthly basis, promoting them to the public at the giveaways.

May - for National Vegetarian Week

Food for the May give-away was donated by:
- The Alley Cafe (burritos and pizza)
- Dotty’s Cafe (cake)
- the Screaming Carrot (pastries)
Volunteers made pizza, scones & marble cake at the skill-share.

Locally produced recipe booklets were given to people who specifically asked for them - 50 of the 16-page booklets were distributed, as well as a supply of Vegan Society recipe books!

Shortly following this giveaway the Vegan Society kindly offered to sponsor future events, giving us a small grant to contribute towards stalls throughout the rest of the year.

July - Veggieburger theme!

The July skill-share was a big success, with participants shown how to make cheap and easy veggie burgers: using only oats, a tin of beans, whatever vegetables they liked and some herbs and spices. See the photos and report at:
www.veggies.org.uk/2010/07/vegan-cooking-skillshare-july10/

The food for this giveaway was donated by:
- Screaming Carrot (pastries)
- Veggies (cakes and Veggies burgers)
Volunteers also made vegan pizza and hot veggie burgers cooked at the giveaway itself.

September - Freshers’ Week event.

For the September event the campaign team took on board advice from the Vegan Society to make the events more sustainable. A new volunteer took the intitiative of writing to companies for samples for the giveaways.

Food was donated from:
- Alley Cafe (pizza and burritos)
- Bute Island Foods (Scheese spreads and hard cheese)
- Provamel (soya milk drinks)
- Screaming Carrot (pastries)
Volunteers also made pizza and cake.

The giveaway was a huge success, attracting a massive amount of interest and involvement from the new students.

October - two giveaways, for 10:10:10 and the International Day of Action Against McDonald’s

To mark 10:10:10, the vegan chocolate cake recipe from the recipe section of the 10:10:10 website was distributed at the ‘Stuff of Life’ Community Festival, on the day before 10:10:10.

The following Friday (15th), a free-food giveaway was held outside McDonald’s as part of the International Day of Action against the corporation. Food was donated by:
- Screaming Carrot (pastries)
- Veggies (cake)
Volunteers also cooked hot veggie-burgers outside McDonald’s.

November - National Vegan Month

Rather than doing the usual giveaway in Nottingham, members of Nottingham Animal Rights and Veggies worked with the new Derby group to hold Derby’s first free food giveaway. The event was so successful that the activists were invited to talk about the campaign on BBC Radio Derby, with the presenter sampling the food live on air and encouraging people to buy it!

In Nottingham itself, members of the campaign helped with Animal Aid’s ‘Friend or Food’ campaign, challenging people’s distinction between animals reared as livestock and companion animals (‘pets’).

Get involved!
Email  nottsfreefood@gmail.com or call 0115 960 8254

Support our work