Growing our Future – Okehampton

Growing our Future is an artist-led community garden project based primarily at Okehampton College in West Devon.  It aims to involve people of all ages in finding solutions to the environmental challenges we are faced with – climate change, pollution, waste, food security and peak oil. 

The project has a 25-year lease from the College and is a Not For Profit Company Ltd by Guarantee.  Growing Our Future started in 2008, after about six months of thinking it through, planning and building relationships within the local community.  We decided to get started on the project itself instead of worrying about waiting to apply for lots of funding, so over two years on we have lots of different funders covering different elements of the project. 5 people work full/part time on different aspects of the project, including project management, fundraising, photo documentation, teaching and more.  Many, many more volunteers are the backbone of the work!

Growing Our Future is about learning through hands-on experience sowing, growing, harvesting, team work and play, research, composting and creating beauty to sit and enjoy. We work primarily with school students form the Community College, but also have regular sessions with Primary school students, adults of all ages, parents and children on family work days, people with learning difficulties and more.

The food we produce is used in the college canteen and all food waste from the college is composted on-site – this is just one way we are looking at the life cycles of food.  We work in a polytunnel and raised beds on the College site and are also developing a new growing area in a walled garden within a school quadrangle. The Town council has also identified 16 small sites around town (eg. round-abouts, street edging, small pockets of land) that we will work on in the future.

We are working with 11 feeder primary schools on the theme: “Who Grows What Where?” The children bring in local, seasonal food for display (and for smoothie making on a pedal-powered bike-blender!); information on local growers and recipes of dishes prepared with food grown locally.  All this will be compiled into a book illustrated by the children in a print-making workshop. We also work in their school gardens and on their composting facilities, which we installed or added to during our Growing Our Future outreach project last year (2009).

Currently, we are working with a year 7 group on a ‘100 Years’ project; looking at food production 100 years ago, right now, and 100 years into the future. This involves plenty of gardening, linking with partners around the world finding out about other peoples experience of climate change and their solutions. 

People with learning disabilities come to the site regularly, and work along-side other staff and volunteers. If any problems arise, Growing Our Future staff are quick to talk it through with those concerned. That way, Beth says, “it’s all out in the open and students learn to take responsibility for their actions”.

Our website is still under development, but have a look at our