James Kirwan discusses the issues of social innovation and localisation in relation to work carried out by the CCRI team looking at the Local Food Programme in England

1. Grassroots social innovations and food
localisation: the Local Food programme in
England
James Kirwan, Brian Ilbery, Damian Maye
CCRI Rural Policy Conference, Gloucester
Pastoral or Past-Caring? New Directions In Rural Policy
27th September 2012

2. Outline
• Context
• Local Food programme
• Grassroots social innovation
• Discussion
• Conclusions
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3. Context
• Evaluation of the Big Lottery funded Local Food
programme.
• Giving voice to local food networks (LFNs).
• Moving beyond technocratic responses.
• Encompassing the social contribution of LFNs.
• Developing community capacity through
grassroots social innovations.
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4. Local Food programme
• £60 million programme.
• Launched in 2007.
• Distributes funds to more than 500 food related
projects, ranging from small grants of £2000 up to
£500,000 (‘Beacon’ projects).
• Aim: to make locally grown food accessible and
affordable to local communities.
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5. Local Food programme - themes
1. To enable communities to manage land sustainably for
growing food locally.
2. To enable communities to build knowledge and
understanding and to celebrate the cultural diversity of
food.
3. To stimulate local economic activity and the development
of community enterprises concerned with growing,
processing and marketing local food.
4. To create opportunities for learning and the development
of skills through volunteering, training and job creation.
5. To promote awareness and understanding of the links
between local food and healthy lifestyles. 5

6. Social Innovation
• Historically can be traced back to Max Weber.
• Socio-technical regimes.
• Distinctiveness of ‘social’ innovations.
– ‘Innovation does not occur in the medium of technical
artefact but at the level of social practice’.
– Interaction is at the centre of any social innovation.
• Social innovations are effectively ‘acts of change’.
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7. Grassroots Social Innovation
• Innovations associated with economic innovations and,
in particular, technical efficiency.
• “Networks of activists and organisations generating
novel bottom-up solutions” Seyfang and Smith (2007, p. 585).
• Two key goals:
– To satisfy the needs of those people or communities who may
in some way be disadvantaged.
– An ideological commitment to develop alternatives to the
mainstream hegemonic regime.
• Developing the capacities of communities to respond to
locally identified problems. 7

8. The five dimensions of social innovation
(adapted from Moulaert et al. (2005) and Adams and Hess (2008)
2. Changes to social
1. The satisfaction of relations through 3. Increasing socio-
human needs process political capability and
access to resources
Grassroots social
innovations as a means
of developing community
capacity
4. Asset building at 5. The community as
an individual and a social agent
community level
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9. 1. The satisfaction of human needs
• Three main types of output:
– Land
– People
– Events
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10. 2. Changes to social relations through process
• Increased levels of participation at both community and
personal levels.
• Social interaction, with food functioning as a ‘social
communicator’.
• Immaterial social benefits brought about through social
process. 10

11. 3. Increasing levels of socio-political capability
and access to resources
• Food may provide the pretext for projects, but their aims
encompass more than simply food.
• ‘Using local food as an object to foster local community
development’.
• Empowering local people to take some kind of ownership of
a project through developing their capacity and skills base. 11

12. 4. Asset building at an individual and
community level
• Organisational capacity building and formalising an asset
base at a community level.
• Asset building at a personal level
– Longer term outcomes/legacy of education and learning
about food.
– Work with schools has introduced new generation to food.
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13. 5. The community as social agent
• The importance of embedding projects within their
communities.
• In the absence of community support and engagement, it
will be impossible for projects to develop the capacity of
those involved and to instigate change.
• The importance of place to initiate community buy-in and
cross sectoral activity. 13

14. Discussion
• Conceptualising LFNs as grassroots social innovations
extends understanding of their wider impacts.
• Enabled a reinterpretation of what is meant by the terms
‘accessible’ and ‘affordable’.
• Food as the pretext and vector for developing community
capacity.
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15. Discussion
Social innovations as “new forms of civic involvement,
participation and democratisation... contributing to an
empowerment of disadvantaged groups and leading to
better citizen involvement which may, in turn, lead to a
satisfaction of hitherto unsatisfied human needs”.
Neumeier (2011, p. 53)
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16. Conclusion
• Local foods’ true value may be best assessed at the level
of social practice and not in terms of material benefits.
While the LF programme is undoubtedly about bringing
small, often neglected pieces of land into production and
increasing physical access to affordable food, local food is
also very much seen as a vehicle for community cohesion,
regeneration, healthy eating, educational enhancement
and integrating disadvantaged groups into mainstream
society and economy.
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17. Thank you for your attention
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