Food Poverty ⏤ The Cambridgeshire Paradox
The Project
Cambridgeshire County Council │Jan - June 2021
Cambridgeshire is one of the most prosperous regions in the UK, renowned for its world-leading innovation cluster. Yet, food bank queues have grown longer and longer in the past 10 years, reaching record length with the COVID-19 pandemic. In partnership with the local authorities we have investigated ⏤ why are more and more residents in Cambridgeshire, a region generating £48bn annual revenue, struggling to put food on the table?
Mapping the system of food poverty in Cambridgeshire has revealed interconnections between the broader national system, the economic context of the region and family budgets. The project presents local authorities with recommendations to address the situation through a new systemic lens.
The Process
This project involved a collaborative partnership with local government authorities in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, who provided our team with quantitative data and introductions to community organisations. We conducted extensive interviews with districts, charities, food banks, parishes, local businesses, referral agencies, schools and a few workshops with local authorities themselves. Through this approach, our team mapped the system of food poverty in Cambridgeshire, investigating how local interventions are both addressing and reproducing this wicked problem.
While keeping those who suffer from food insecurity at the centre of the narrative, our research and analysis
intend to connect all the different dimensions of the food poverty issue and to provide a clear picture of the wide system that reproduces this problem.
Insights from our primary and secondary research were iteratively mapped and layered to build a model of the system. Inter-connecting different perspectives and layers of the problem that often remain siloed in action (the food bank user journey, urban development policies, welfare services, family budgeting, education and the job market etc), the model is the basis for a policy analysis and a reframing of the issue.
One of the multiple layers of our food poverty model.
The Design
Our research and analysis resulted in the creation of the Food Poverty in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough report for the Cambridgeshire County Council. Revealing interconnections between the broader national system, the economic context of the region and family budgets, the report emphasises that food poverty is before anything else a symptom of poverty.
Uncovering the relationships between local dynamics of gentrification, solidly ingrained vicious cycles of deprivation and national austerity, the report illustrates the story of families whose budget is increasingly
squeezed between frozen resource streams and living costs set on fire.
Presented to the region’s policymakers, the report suggest a new approach to the problem of food poverty beyond its usual framing, transcending traditional silos of policy action. Despite being addressed to a regional audience, it does not forget to point at the importance of national welfare reforms, highlighting the need for coordinated large-scale action to truly hold back what has become a plague across the UK.
This project was realised with Farah Khan, Teresa Miquel, Justin Beirold, Manuel Maldonado Acosta and Riedwaan Fakier.