This page summarises input from the Camden Future Food Dinner, the Future Food System Workshop on 6 August, and the research sessions that preceded them. It has not been agreed by the Partnership. Ideas are organised against the three foundations of the Food as Infrastructure portfolio, to identify who is positioned to take each one forward.
Nothing here is new, and none of it is decided. It’s a synthesis of what was actually said, pulled together so it reads as one shared memory instead of three separate ones.
Held at Calthorpe Community Garden. The first time many partners sat down together around the size of the challenge — and the first outline of Camden as a demand-shaper rather than a producer.
6 August — five parallel table conversations and a closing reflection. Almost every idea below traces back to something said at one of these tables.
The Negative Portfolio v2.0, the Hubs & Markets Working Group, the Nutrition Supply Map, and the Live Camden food-system map — the evidence base this page sits on top of.
Everything raised in the room is organised below against the same three foundations the wider Food as Infrastructure portfolio is built on. They’re the test every idea on this page eventually has to pass.
The baseline shifts from “enough food” to genuinely nourishing food — because a system that only solves for calories quietly manufactures the next public-health crisis while claiming to have solved the last one.
No single borough’s contract is big enough to move a farmer’s decision. A buying coalition of London boroughs and businesses is — turning committed public and commercial demand into the confidence a grower needs to convert land.
Procurement protocols and buying coalitions don’t feed anyone on their own. Grocers, dinners, workshops and community-run hubs are the layer where the foundations above turn into food someone can actually buy or receive.
Ideas raised in the room that shift what Camden measures and pays attention to — from “enough food” to food that actually nourishes people.
Map what Camden residents actually need nutritionally against what’s currently grown and available, before committing to new contracts or sponsored farmland.
Grounded in: the regional-sourcing table, Future Food System Workshop — feeds the existing Nutrition Supply Map tool.An annual receipt totalling spend, salt and sugar against delivery-app orders — no verdict attached, just the number, the way cigarette packaging works.
Grounded in: the Indy reflection session, the “£8,000 on Uber Eats” moment.A cross-retailer fund investing in demand for healthy food and new food cultures, priced against the revenue uplift it creates — because no public body can out-spend existing food marketing budgets alone.
Grounded in: the Indy reflection session — a named item on the main portfolio site’s Demand track.Pharmacies reframed as neighbourhood performance-and-nutrition nodes — fresh food, dietary advice and community links, framed around aspiration rather than illness.
Grounded in: the new-economics table — already named and scoped identically on the main portfolio site.Basic nutrition training and food-prescription routes for GPs and health workers — related to, but distinct from, the Farmacy pilot itself.
Grounded in: the health-link conversation, Future Food System Workshop.Collapse the choice down to healthy options only, rather than removing choice altogether — the simplification that makes a genuinely robust supply chain possible behind it.
Grounded in: a separate conversation between Dark Matter Labs and Camden’s Health & Wellbeing Department, on school catering.Ideas raised in the room about turning Camden’s buying power — and Camden alongside other boroughs’ buying power — into the confidence a grower or supplier needs to convert land or change practice.
Camden-backed relationships with farms outside the borough, scaling proven cooperative wholesale models (e.g. the Better Food Traders network) rather than duplicating them.
Grounded in: the regional-sourcing table — with an open governance question about sponsorship vs. ownership still unresolved.Support for farms through the multi-year dip in income (“J-curve”) that agroecological conversion typically causes, financed against a long-term buying commitment.
Grounded in: the Future Food Dinner and the Indy reflection session, echoing the Danish 90%-by-2040 procurement model.A forecasting engine that predicts surplus and shortfall across a network of farms and routes supply between them before a contract breaks.
Grounded in: the Indy reflection session, in the supply-chain conversation with Andy and Carl.Subsidised water butts and sustainable drainage capture linked to growing spaces, treating water access as a limiting factor worth investing in directly.
Grounded in: the regional-sourcing table, referencing NYC precedent.Scale the existing “one conversation instead of a hundred” model (Young Foundation / Carl) into a repeatable, institutional capability rather than a personal relationship.
Grounded in: the Indy reflection session — matches the site’s own definition almost word for word.A joint public/private Camden charter, deliberately set beyond existing certifications — Food for Life Served Here’s gold standard only requires around 15% organic.
Grounded in: the procurement table, both workshops — the direct precursor to the portfolio’s Procurement Protocol.Attaching living-wage and healthy-catering conditions to access that’s already in high demand — such as Camden Market/Lock’s three-year trader waiting list.
Grounded in: the procurement table — a low-cost move using power the council already has, not new money.A broader policy ask than the procurement charter alone — shaping what’s easy and hard to buy across the borough, not just what the council itself buys.
Grounded in: the table-summaries session, Future Food System Workshop.A company majority-owned by the council from day one, with private capital covering the up-front cost of in-sourcing a contract — repaid over time until the council holds it outright.
Grounded in: a separate conversation between Dark Matter Labs and Camden’s Health & Wellbeing Department — Camden had already explored, and shelved, in-sourcing school catering over up-front cost.The largest group of ideas from the room — the hubs, co-ops, grocers, matchmaking and organising that turn the two foundations above into food someone can actually buy or receive.
The single biggest tangible near-term idea named at the workshop — a hub-and-spoke model, anchored at Regis Road, with composting/anaerobic digestion planned alongside it.
Grounded in: multiple tables — directly continued by the London Hubs & Markets Working Group.A recognisable, minimum-standards toolkit so anyone can start a co-op and residents can recognise one the way they’d recognise a supermarket or the Underground.
Grounded in: the co-ops table, Future Food System Workshop.Referral routes into compliant community kitchens for residents who want to batch-cook or sell food but whose home kitchens aren’t set up for it.
Grounded in: the regional-sourcing table, Future Food System Workshop.Next-generation, membership-model grocers with genuinely lower prices on a fixed cadence, and part-volunteer/part-paid/part-commercial ownership structures.
Grounded in: the Indy reflection session, riffing on the Mamdani NYC grocery model.UK-viable versions of vending-style fresh produce access (the Farmer’s Fridge model) for transit and other high-footfall locations.
Grounded in: raised independently at both the action-options and regional-group tables.A real-time mechanism connecting community projects with contractors and developers already on site, so in-kind support isn’t lost once a contract ends.
Grounded in: Kira’s (Camden social value lead) contribution at the regional-group table.Local groups covering every area of the borough, deliberately linked to the parallel health neighbourhood networks work.
Grounded in: the table-summaries session, Future Food System Workshop.Formalising licensing for street food and small-scale enterprise — the most carbon- and infrastructure-efficient food format there is.
Grounded in: the new-economics table — matches the site’s Street Food Licensing item directly.Pairing schools with spare playing fields against schools that have growing space. The table’s own conclusion: safeguarding and DBS constraints mean this lands as an education role, not a supply source — worth stating plainly rather than quietly dropping.
Grounded in: the regional-sourcing table, Future Food System Workshop.These don’t have a Supply/Hub/Demand tag because they’re not infrastructure — they’re what makes the Partnership itself credible enough to run any of the above.
Already has council officer time behind it — the table’s point was that it needs community weight alongside that, not instead of it.
The Enfield example: someone from Properties having to work out how food relates to their own remit. No one owns making this happen yet.
Distinct from the existing partner-facing one. Open — raised as a gap, not claimed.
Came from someone already running the health bus — practical and ready to extend, not hypothetical.
Named directly in the closing round; no single lead confirmed yet.
Distinct from the Nutrition Supply Map. A good pairing with whoever picks up the resilience committee below.
A challenge thrown to the room, not picked up on the day — worth asking who felt strongly enough to say it.
Farah is already doing some engagement with convenience stores and small shops — worth checking what would help her do more.
Already run once in Camden; the plan is to scale it into a quarterly convening for food and health leads across London boroughs — the actual mechanism behind Tier 2’s coalition, not just its ambition.
People nominate themselves for a workstream and declare where they want to be in six months, validated by the group — soft accountability that separates real energy from a meeting habit.
The wider portfolio runs on three speeds at once. Here’s what that means for the ideas above.
Not a RACI chart. This is a reading of the room — where someone already showed up with real energy for an idea, named or not, and what’s still an open question. The point of the next Partnership conversation is to test these readings out loud, not to confirm them from behind a desk.
| Idea | Energy already visible on the day | Open question to ask the room |
|---|---|---|
| Resilience committee | Tanya brought the proposal and put her name to it directly | Who convenes it locally and keeps the risk register alive after the first meeting? |
| Procurement charter | Rosemary: “if anyone wants to talk about a charter, let’s do it” | Who else wants in, and who owns the supplier relationships day to day? |
| Social value live-matchmaking | Kira is already doing versions of this as Camden’s social value lead | Does she want this to become a repeatable process, or stay as it is? |
| Camden food hub(s) | Damien Conrad (Felix Project) is already directing the Hubs & Markets Working Group carrying this forward | Who from Camden sits alongside him on it day to day? |
| Collective buying engine | Carl’s own business needs this to exist within six months | Who helps that urgency become an institutional capability, not just Carl’s own relationships? |
| Sponsored / underwritten farmland | Dorothea pushed hardest for this at the table | Who follows up on the sponsorship-vs-ownership question she raised? |
| Farmacy pilot | Indy’s idea; Carl reacted to it live as an opportunity for his own business pivot | Who scopes an actual pilot site and partner? |
| Non-traditional food actors | Farah is already doing some of this engagement | What would help her do more of it? |
| Co-op toolkit & standards | Strong consensus at the table — no single name attached yet | Who’s willing to put their name on this first? |
| London-wide coalition | Camden is already several boroughs ahead via the Hubs & Markets Working Group | Which peer borough lead picks up the phone next? |
If you recognise your own energy in any row above — or in any card further up this page — say so at the next Partnership meeting, or reply directly so it doesn’t sit as an unclaimed idea for another quarter. The job right now is finding out who’s genuinely ready to carry something, not assigning it.
Camden Council keeps a seat at the table — funding, convening, advertising the work — without holding the steering wheel. A declared, public work programme replaces “come and collaborate.”
Camden and a founding group of neighbouring boroughs take on shared standards and collective buying — the exact agenda the London Hubs & Markets Working Group is already running, several boroughs early.
A policy briefing, routed through Oxford, arguing for the deregulation that lets capable local actors build without red tape — timed to the Civil Contingencies Act review window.
This is the one action from the workshop that appears almost word for word in the wider portfolio’s own “concrete first move” — proposed independently at the table by a Partnership member, and matched exactly by the National Preparedness Commission’s review.
The Borough Resilience Forum already covers police, hospitals, ambulance and fire. Tim Lang’s National Preparedness Commission review recommends every local authority add a food resilience committee — the Cabinet Office is deciding whether to make that statutory. A borough that moves first has already done most of the work before the law asks for it.
A few genuine disagreements ran through the room. They’re decisions the Partnership needs to make deliberately, not oversights in this synthesis.
Every idea above sits on top of work that’s already built and public. Worth opening before your next Partnership conversation.
Food fragility treated as a demand-construction opportunity, not a supply deficit.
Six distinct levers for moving London's buying power behind organic, resilient, civic-led food — with an honest read on where the portfolio already has traction.
A plain-English walkthrough of one way to sequence the eight-shelf portfolio, idea to instrument — a worked example, not the definitive route.
Where the Hub track gets tested against real boroughs, leases and funding gaps.
Where Camden’s food actually comes from, and the shocks that travel home with it.
Hubs, retailers, growers and routes in one place — with an audio briefing.
Economic and monetary instruments for redesigning food-system finance, built for Sweden.
