Cultural Kitchen

A couple of weeks ago we had a cultural kitchen to mark the beginning of refugee week, within this time we organised for members of parliament to come and enjoy the cultural kitchen with us and others there.

We all had healthy halal meal which was prepared by our hardworking staff, we also celebrated refugee week. The activities we ran were facepainting and table tennis. We are running our last Cultural Kitchens of the year these are on the 13^th and 27^th of July.

Allotment Day

The START gardening, previously known as Cultivating communities, is a project we at START have set up and been running since 2005.

We directly run this as we believe having a place to think, reflect, escape and dream is important to all of us. If you are isolated in an unfamiliar country where you have little control or influence over what happens in your daily life; you may carry the burden of why you fled, who you left behind and the trauma of getting to the UK; such a breathing space can be vital. Through our Cultivating Communities - allotment project, situated on Central Park in Plymouth, we offer such a space.

We decided to give this project a real boost as it was coming up to the time where we wanted to get all of our plants in the ground. To do this we have recently held an Allotment day, with a BBQ. We ran this day on Thursday 5th July. During this time we all pitched in to help weeding and tidy the allotment. We braved the wet weather, and worked through to turn the earth and plant more vegetables and fruit in the ground. Once we had finished we had planted:

Onions

Strawberry

Marrow

Courgettes

Mint

Broad Beans

Runner Beans

Potatoes

Chillies

Sweet Peppers

Corn

Grapes

Aubergines

Rosemary

Artichokes

Rhubarb

Pumpkins

Red Cabbage

Cabbage

Purple Broccoli

Leeks

Parsnips

and Many more

We all had a fun day and got hands on with it all. Hopefully this year we will have a fruitful and bountiful harvest (if the slugs don't get there first)

International Fashion Show - Refugee week

 Organised by Plymouth Migrant Communities Forum

Traditional Clothes

Drum workshop

Music

Refreshments

Saturday 23rd June 2012

5.00pm - 8.00pm

Barbican Theatre

Castle Street, Plymouth, PL1 2NJ

All Welcome

CK celebrates Refugee Week 2012

Cultural Kitchen celebrates Refugee Week

Last Friday, we celebrated the pre-launch of Refugee Week

and the Cultural Kitchen reaching its 9th birthday.

Happy Birthday CK!

Having started as a pilot way back in 2003, the Cultural Kitchen remains an established and important meeting place for refugees living in Plymouth. This is true now for those coming in 2012 as it was for those needing a safe place back in 2003. Many of those volunteering and cooking today were there when we started and now offer a welcome to those wanting to get involved today.  

Over 90 people attended the session last Friday. The atmosphere was vibrant, alive and full of energy. Most came to the Kitchen as this is their regular space to socialise and share a meal and catch up with friends. Some came representing other organisations in Plymouth; The Red Cross, DCRS, The Salvation Army, South West Lakes Trust, Plymouth Migrant Communities Together (PMCT), Hope FC to celebrate the community coming together for the start of refugee week 2012 .

The organisers of Refugee Week, PMCT and Hope FC, were there to promote other events happening over the next 7 days which included the official launch on Saturday  with a football festival at Brickfields sports centre.

Also, we were especially delighted that Oliver Coleville (MP) accepted our invitation to attend. Our intention was for him to see the possibilities and positive energy that refugees bring to Plymouth. He  spent 45mins talking with community members and getting a good feel for the work that START does in Plymouth.

The children had their faces painted turning them into a whole menagerie of exotic animals and butterflies, whilst a frantic table tennis tournament was in full swing. At 7.30pm the food was served. an excellent menu mixing our usual cultural fare with the taste of the Congo - Lamb curry, chilied vegetarian lasagna, Cassava leaves with sardines and semolina. All very tasty and enjoyed by all.

The next Kitchen will be on:

29th June 2012

Eden Project Trip

Hello! We at START recently organised a trip to the Eden Project. This was as a launch for our allotment project. We went to the Eden Project on the 6th of February 2012. This was a great opportunity for some of our regular allotment users to come on a trip with us. We also brought some new service users along with us to try and get them to help us out at the allotment. We also did this trip to get an idea of what to grow in the forthcoming year and also to see what a large project like the Eden Project has done with their gardens.

We left at 10.45 to go to the Eden Project. When we got there we were keen to go straight to the rainforest biome (bubble looking things) which was very humid as you would expect. This was particularly fun for the people who came to the Eden Project to point out what plants were native to their own country as well as to enjoy the features of the Eden Project, such as the waterfall and the high view of the whole biome. In this biome we saw many plants such as, coffee plants, banana trees, coca plants, pinapple plants, gum trees and many more.

We then went on to the Mediterranean biome which was much cooler then the rainforest biome. In this biome we saw, chilli plants, varying citrus trees, cacti, fig trees and much more.

We then walked in the gardens briefly, but before we knew it our time was running out so we had a quick shop and lunch.

We then started our drive back to START at 3.15. Overall it was a really fun trip and gave us some great ideas about what to grow in our allotment project.

Comments from our service users:
“Very educational and enjoyed all the different plants and flowers”