Let’s do food differently | w. Carrick Greengrocers & Jon Alexander

0:00Hey everyone and thanks for being here. Just to let you know, we're running a quick survey to see if listening to this podcast affects your sense of hopefulness. The link's in the description. Thanks and enjoy the show. We created a Britain Bed shop that is community led. The first week we expected to take something like 620 quid and we took 10 grand. It was just bonkers. In a time full of challenges, we're going to take you on a journey of the possible. I think often we get told that you can't have that or we couldn't possibly do this, but we actually can. Stories that show how ordinary people can take matters into their own hands.

0:36Don't take no for an answer anymore, so you just try and find a way around that. And create a future we all actually want to live in. One that could change our whole country. Just incredible to me. They've basically just been like, these guys aren't going to do it. We're just going to do it ourselves. I'm Marianne Pasha. And I'm Matt Golding. Join us on a road trip across the country as each episode we hear from an ordinary community who've done something extraordinary. And then explore what the country could look like if more of us joined in. You can find links to the things we mention on our website antidotelive.studio or videos on our social channels antidotelive.

1:11Sometimes in a world that's not always working out. It's time to say screw this. Let's try something else.

1:21Hey Mariam. Hey Matt. How are you doing? Feeling pumped after our last episode and ready to know what's next. Right, well this story brings together a few themes a lot of us share. We all eat, a lot of us feel frustrated about the state of the world, and a lot of us have witnessed the decline of our local high streets. It's a really British phenomenon, and now to watch it slowly fall apart, it's really sad. Yeah, they're like the beating hearts of the community, and when they go, loads of other really important stuff goes too. And that's what this community in Northern Ireland felt. So they came together to reboot their town.

1:55And the way they did it was through food. I like food. Me too. What's cool about this is the actions they've taken are very achievable. No massive wind turbines this time. No, not this time. Okay, let's get into it. Yeah, let's go. So straight off, I'm going to introduce you to one of the team behind the project, Lee. My name's Lee Rob. I am one of the people that started Carrick Greengrocers. so we're based here in Carrickfergus which is about 10-12 miles just outside Belfast. How does the Greengracer kind of epitomize the future to you? How is what you're building part of the future? The fact that it is you know that we grew this out of what people wanted in their local community.

2:35It's kind of gone far further than I ever would have anticipated whenever we first started. You know four years ago I wasn't working in food at all and but now I've kind of find ourselves at the centre of this emergent food system. And we really are keen to share what we've learned and demonstrate that this is a model that could be replicated in other places. I'm very excited to have this conversation. I don't hear the word greengrocer enough in my life and I have a bit of a soft spot for Northern Ireland in my heart. My parents lived there for a few years. Personally, I find the story of this place, this community, and especially how openly Lee talks about it, a real eye-opener in how we can create change.

3:21But it started in a way many of us can probably relate to, out of feeling stuck in a place that wasn't doing great. I am Carrick Fergus, born and bred, and grew up in the Troubles. Left, came back like lots of people in my generation, working in Belfast, and I'm working for a big organisation, really disconnected from my community. And as well as the history of the Troubles, the 30-year conflict that ended in the late 90s, Carrick was feeling the effects of more recent challenges.

3:54A lot of shipbuilding started in Carrick, and Carrick would have been, like, the main port for this part of Ireland until they could start dredging the lot.

4:06And then everything kind of moved to Belfast. and the place of full employment went to 20 % unemployment very, very quickly. And lots of people left and the sense of community was lost and that's never really been replaced. That was pretty devastating for Carrick. And even though it felt like Carrick was splintering apart, for a long time Lee, like many of us, didn't have the bandwidth to do much about it. I was a single parent and I suppose when you, you know, being a single parent and your kind of financial security was the most important thing to me and then my daughter grew up and left home I was in my early 40s and was like conscious I suppose that I was ready for a change and I went through redundancy and work and that kind of makes you really reflect on where you are and what you're doing with your life initially I was thinking of moving out of Carrick because it wasn't a place that I felt very connected to if I'd moved I would have got myself trapped in a massive mortgage and I would have had to kind of stay trapped in a system that I was becoming increasingly collusioned with.

5:15It was really scary but I also like had to kind of grab hold of it and decide what I wanted to do with it and I thought I'm going to find a place for myself and my skills and what I can contribute. There's this approach called Theory U and I thought I'm going to use that U in Carrick. So Theory U is a kind of process you can go through. You can find out about it online, but in a nutshell, it works like a letter U. Right, so you go down before you go up? Exactly. You go down the left of the U and kind of observe and listen to what's happening around you. At the bottom, you reflect on that, you see what comes up for you and what you feel drawn to.

5:51And then you use that to let a vision form that you can create and build as a prototype of the way you want things to be in the actual world. I can see how that's really useful because sometimes it feels like there's pressure to come up with something right way. But this gives you space to listen to yourself, to listen to others, to reflect and then come up with an idea. Right. And there's a bunch of these tools out there for creating change. This is just one. But even though Lee knew the theory of this approach, actually doing it is still nerve wracking at first. I decided that I'm just going to talk to people.

6:19And the first people that offered me a way in were these people that were connected with churches. And my first response was like, no, thank you. That's not for me. And then I kind of went, here am I to be like, these people have offered the hand of friendship and invited me in. Maybe I should just take it. I went there and kind of talked to people about what I was interested in, the big negative story that was being told over and over again. And, you know, kind of said, I would like to live in a place that kind of feels different and where it isn't so negative all the time. You know, what do you think?

6:51Just quite openly and just listening to what they had to say. The big negative story was about the kind of place that Carrick was, but it also ran deeper than that. It tapped into something we probably We all feel that things are getting worse, not better. But just through the simple act of asking, something started to shift around Leigh. I think I was surprised at how easy it was and how generous people were with their connections. And then they went, you should talk to such and such. You should talk to such and such. And that just kept on going. And I'd also started a Facebook page called Positive Carrick Fergus to kind of start a conversation.

7:26This digital conversation about what could be different in Carrick soon took off, growing to up to 7 ,000 members. But as it grew, the energy also grew in the real world. The first really tangible thing was we held a big lunch in the town hall. It's just this amazing asset sitting at the Emperor High Street that's chronically underused. And on the Facebook page, it was like, who's interested in helping out? And 14 women said, yeah, I'd help. I love that because you know once you say you're going to cook for people it becomes something special right it becomes more than just a meeting you're sharing food people have put their effort and their care into it and I think it's like a really deep way of connecting people together totally but this brilliant idea nearly didn't happen really well as soon as you start doing stuff like this all kinds of curdy questions start coming up some of which are literally life and death.

8:20There was a suggestion maybe that we put a sign up saying a disclaimer if people got food poisoning. Like imagine going round your neighbour's house and having to sign a disclaimer before you sat down for dinner with them. This is supposed to, it's neighbourliness. That's what this is about. Thankfully they were able to come to an agreement that whatever their culinary deficiencies might turn out to be, they probably weren't going to kill each other. We were able to just come together and everybody donated a bit of food. Then we decorated the town hall so it looked really nice and we had some nice entertainment, which was donated.

8:53Because actually all those resources that we need are often already there at our disposal. There was over 100 people came to it. It was a really beautiful sunny day. Our town hall has side doors that open out on the high streets so we had them open and make music on. So people were just stuck their head in who hadn't heard about it and were like, what's happening? It's like, come in. There's loads of food. Come on in, get some of the food. So people started talking, and from that came the first seeds of a plan to create a new story for Carrick. We set up a CIC, applied for some funding, which was the Lottery Emerging Futures Fund.

9:33So a CIC is a community interest company that must benefit a community. It also allows you to apply for grants. and with that first bit of funding secured, Leah and her fellow residents wanted to do something simple. But like in all these stories, crucially important. It's like finding out what people want and generally people haven't spent a lot of time doing that in Carrick. There have been a lot of kind of top-down approaches to improving Carrick that have failed because they haven't really asked the people here what they want. So momentum was building, but then... But then... Right as things were getting going, that thing happened.

10:08Covid. Lockdown. Not again. No more lunches. But they were determined to keep discovering what change people wanted locally. So we developed some postcards, asked people what their wildest dream was for Carrick. And about 40 people volunteered to deliver them. People wanted to get out, have a reason, have a bit of a purpose, right? And get their steps in. That was the other thing. Just people really wanted to get their steps in. So we delivered them to 10 ,000 households across Carrick. And then people took the time to put stamps on them or deliver them back. I think we got about 100 posted back.

10:44So they got 100 back. That's 1%. Is that good? Well, Lee said at first they were a bit unsure themselves. But then they thought, it's the start of something. So they read them all. The two main things that come up that we could respond to were around more arts, culture, music, and more shops on the high street. because everyone's concerned about the decline of the high street. That turned into a conversation about food and where people buy their food. And we also knew that people reminisced frequently about the one particular green grocer on our high street in Carrick. So just knew that there was like a kernel of something there and there was some energy and a bit of sadness.

11:25When we started talking to people worried about good quality local produce. And I think this bit really shows that there's no one-size-fits-all way to improve your community. Back in episode one, when we were in Lawrence Weston, they were fighting to bring a supermarket into their community because they were in a food desert. And yet in Carrick, it feels like that would be totally not the right solution. Not at all. And here, supermarkets were a part of the problem. That decline of the high street, I think, really took hold when most supermarkets came in and moved. County will child centre. When I started talking to people about their experience of living in Carrick, it hurts people.

11:59You know, the feeling that the heart of the town has been lost. people said this is a town of 30 ,000 people there's no reason why we couldn't have our own green grocers here and then the next question was what about a community-owned green grocers what if we started a green grocer that was focused on the community and they didn't just say yes I would shop there they said yes I would love to be involved in something like that like I love the way she talks about this how it wasn't just really simple she was afraid she was putting herself out there and it actually paid off and I think that overcoming that fear is really inspiring but it also makes me think that if you're brave enough to put something out there people respond.

12:40I think we're all just sitting in our houses silently crying out for someone to do something so if you actually do people show up. When we're talking about starting new stuff there's no risk or no cause to me asking a question but you find out where there's energy for stuff and then it's like working with that energy. And that turned into 10 of us getting together in our positive carat focus space for a kind of a meeting one night and saying, is there something in this? Are people up for this? It looks like there might be something. And it's such a simple idea, a greengrocer. We're probably more used to seeing councils doing something akin to rearranging some random street furniture.

13:21But a greengrocer does multiple things. Yeah, it can connect a community with locally grown food, revitalise a high street and bring people together. So no shade on benches, they started to fundraise to turn an empty shop in Carrick into something amazing. The minimum amount that we needed to raise was£25 ,000. I had absolutely no idea whether that was feasible or not. I think probably, if I'm really honest, I thought that it was unlikely in Carrick. There's a reluctance to get on board with that because it's too scary. They set about creating community shares, which are essentially a way for local people to chip in with what they can afford and co-own a bit of the shop.

13:59And ultimately, this is about food, right? And needing food. It's a vice we all share. It bridges a lot of divides. Story we're told when we did the community share office. Like, you might care about being able to buy local food. You might be in complete despair about the state of the planet. You might just be concerned about the decline of the town centre. If any of those things resonate with you, you're welcome here. You don't all have to care about exactly the same stuff. and so in a world where there isn't much talk of division you can pull people together around a big idea. We did lots of community engagement work, had lots of events and invited people along, talked about what we wanted to do.

14:39People were able to think really crucially, look us in the eye and work out whether we were full of crap or not. I get it. I mean, after the last few decades we've had I think it's a natural instinct to think people might be full of crap. It's a fair suspicion, but once folks had seen the whites of their eyes and realised they meant it, the momentum started to build and they released a crowdfunded video. We want to open a community-owned greengrocers in the centre of Carrick, Fergus. This is an idea that it's not just a fairy tale, it is something that's very tangible and very real and something that is very possible to do.

15:14I've lived in Carrick on and off most of my life and there always used to be local greengrocers and there hasn't been anything in the town for years now. I think you should buy into the share offer because it feels really good to be involved in something like this. And also you'll get access to really good quality veg. The share offer was open from the start of April until the middle of June and we raised£34 ,000. That's amazing. That must have felt like validation for how important this was to the community. Absolutely. It was amazing. People have given us all this and I think we have to do something with them.

15:50I guess you spend so much time wondering if you can do something, you don't really have a full plan of what happens if it works out. Exactly. But it also shows when everything around you is broken, having a positive vision really excites people. And that, I think, really tells you that people are ready to hear these kind of stories. And I think what's really important when you're kind of on that journey is not to look too far ahead because you freak yourself out. We did not know what we were doing. If we sit around and wait until we all know what we're doing, we'll never get anything done, right?

16:22You just have to get on with it and then you learn how to do it. And kind of like, what's the risk? Nobody else is doing it. And after about eight months and a lot of help, the green grocers they'd imagined opened. The first week we expected to take something like 620 quid and we took 10 grand. It was just bonkers. So this is the moment that really sticks out to me. I'm like, you did all that and your success criteria was you thought you'd get 620 quid and you got so much more. It is actually incredible. OK, Matt, well, I really want to understand. How does it all work? So they really are offering something no one else is doing.

17:02This is nothing like what you get in a supermarket or even an ordinary green roses. We work really closely with a local market gardener whose market garden is only about a mile and a half away from the shop. So we're selling produce that's grown in Carrick. It's chemical-free, uses a no-dig method. He's harvesting it on a Tuesday morning and bringing it straight to our shop. People really notice the difference and talk about it a lot. So this no-dig method, this is a regenerative farming approach. By not ploughing or digging it, the soil stays healthier so that it can grow more food well into the future.

17:36And because it keeps carbon trapped in the soil, it's also better for the climate. If we'd gone out and said, who's interested in climate action in Carrickfergus, it would have been crickets. Do you know what I mean? Like, we wouldn't have found those people. So think about what your offer is. A lot of people want change too, even though we may not be in the same place politically. But they want things to change. I'm assuming, like, no chemicals, locally grown food and a revitalised high street, all those things bring people together. Climate change or no? Yeah, and when we talk about locally grown, we've probably all heard about food miles.

18:10but Carrick is about food minutes, 10 to be exact. Here's Lee from the shop's Instagram. Look at these parsnips. Look at that boy over there. Lovely bunches of carrots. Just a reminder that this is all grown in Carrick Fergus. It's harvested and just brought straight to our shop. So if you're interested in locally grown produce, pop in this week and make sure you pick up some of this gorgeous local produce that has travelled about a mile and a half to get here. And the people of Carrick, they were there for it. I'm Jane. I love coming to here. I come every week, just once a week. It matters tremendously.

18:46It just made Carrick focus a lot nicer for me. I really like eating proper vegetables that are locally grown. It's just a pleasure to come in and have a wee chat and get what I need.

19:01In our first year, our turnover was over£100 ,000. I don't think anybody would have thought that there was£100 ,000 worth of business on the street that we're on in Onkak. So that's 10 ,000 people coming down West Street and coming into our shop. Lots of people said, don't go on that street, nothing ever lasts on that street. We have brought vitality to that street. For every pound that goes into a local economy, it circulates before it starts leaching out. In fact, the 2002 New Economics Foundation study, The Money Trail, estimates that within three circulations, that 100 grand can become worth£255 ,000 locally, suggests the simple act of buying local significantly boosts the local economy.

19:42So you're helping your local area, you're helping the climate and you're helping the economy of the town. It must feel, I mean, is it surprising to have gotten this far? It's kind of gone far further than I ever would have anticipated whenever we first started. And that felt really good, even though it's hard and exhausting. And particularly those first couple of years where you're kind of going, like, am I full of shit? And you've no idea what's going to happen, and it's really hard and precarious, and you're really vulnerable, do you know what I mean? So what has all this taught you? In the Western world, there's chronic lack of vision, so that's where the opportunity is.

20:24I had calm conversations with people about conspiracy theories. Yes, I agree with you. I'm concerned about the way the world's going. I'm concerned that things seem to be collapsing around us. What are you going to do? Are you going to go down this dark path and spend far too long on YouTube watching really, really, really awful stuff? Or are you going to come and help out here? You can be part of this. Like, there's an invitation here, you know, and it's right on your doorstep. I think what really stands out to me and what Lee is saying is that you can get sucked into this spiral of hopelessness where you just focus and circle around on all the worst things happening and how everything feels like it's impossible and you can't do anything.

21:10Or you can stop, look around you and do something and it feels much more grounded, it feels much more human and practical. And does it make you feel any different about things in your world or your life? Yeah, I think that what it makes me think of is you can get swept up in just thinking about the really big things but actually if you just looked around you really locally and looked at those problems, there's actually stuff that you can do where you don't have to wait for something big to happen on a national scale. I agree. I find listening to Lee like a tonic. But we're going to bring someone in now who introduced me to Lee and who has thoughts about just how far this approach can go.

21:48My name's John Alexander. I wrote a book called Citizens, Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us. And I try and share and tell stories of people who are leaning into their communities, leaning into the places where they live and love. and making things happen. John's a friend who's been meeting and collaborating with communities like Carrick and others in this series for years now. When my book came out, I created a page on the website that said, invite me and I will come. And the first person who invited me was a certain Lee Robb in Carrickfergus. And Lee took me for a walk through the town and she showed me the latest monument in Carrickfergus, which was a tank with its gun pointing at the road through the town.

22:26And she told me the story of how that had inspired her to believe that there needed to be another story of that place. And for John, Lee's story sits at the heart of creating a different kind of future, right where you are. And it starts with how you define yourself. And we're surrounded by that kind of white noise that tells us constantly that all we are is consumers and that all anyone around us is as a consumer. I think actually that there's there is a citizen in all of us right and I think of it almost more like a verb than a noun what is it to citizen like to lean in to commit to contribute and just decide that that's how you're going to orientate to the world and it always starts really humbly we're not talking about people starting with something that immediately seems earth-shattering it's it's the The first step is commit to the place, decide to express your love for it, look for those who share that, and then do a first thing together.

23:24And don't think too far beyond that. This idea of a citizen being in all of us is very, very powerful. But I think what stands out to me here, Matt, is just how he talks about expressing your love for a place. Like when you hear about Lee or all the other people we talk to in this series, like they're expressing their love for a place through the work that they do. It's a different and more empowered way to look at the whole world. And interestingly, when you start to do stuff locally, there's a tendency for it to grow. So the journey of this humble greengrocer has taken the team to the heart of some of our biggest questions around food.

24:01So the Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Andrew Muir, insisted that the food strategy framework was launched from our shop, which is really nice. and the Landworkers Alliance is calling for a market garden renaissance in Northern Ireland. About a thousand market gardens operate in the same way that Chris Dobbs who supplies us. Growing in a way that takes care of the soil, so you get nutrient rich food. A diverse range of crops are grown in a way that supports the biodiversity. Wow, so what started as a lockdown postcard survey is now starting to get national attention. There is growing interest in farming in a different way.