🎄 Happy winter holiday 🎄

Hello and happy holidays from Granville Community Kitchen!

We, the Good Food Box (GFB) team, are really pleased to provide this newsletter’s greeting. Many of you may already know us: Riham is our marketing and events extraordinaire, Levi is our ordering and IT genius, and Alex is our new-ish Good Food Box coordinator hailing all the way from Aotearoa, New Zealand.

The Good Food Box is an organic fruit and veg box scheme. Members pay for weekly produce bags using a radical, three-tiered payment system, which helps locals of all incomes to access fresh food while supporting UK farmers (including our own urban gardeners at the Rec!). Those who choose to pay at the highest tier are directly investing in the health and wellbeing of their neighbours on our low and mid-cost levels. We’re all about community-led food and climate justice!

Our Good Food Box bag ✨

It’s been a massive year of change for the Good Food Box. Anna took over GFB coordination from Grey in the early months and then passed the baton to Alex in August. Since then, we’ve been refining our packing process with our lovely volunteers, collaborating with inspiring folks like Seeds of Wild, running a produce stall at St Luke’s Church farmers markets (back next spring), and gathering valuable feedback from our members through our big 2025 survey.

In 2026, we’re looking forward to growing our community through new collection point locations and fun events. We’re also endlessly excited about the developments happening at our sister project, the farm hub. If you’d like to stay in the loop with us, you can follow us on Instagram @gck_goodfoodbox. We’re welcoming new volunteers too, so email alex@granvillecommunitykitchen.org.uk if you’re interested. And if you fancy supporting our work by gifting a food bag this holiday season, we’ve got a quick and easy donation button you can click right here

🎁 Gift a Bag!

Wishing you all a safe, happy, and delicious holiday season!

✨ Highlights of this season ✨

🪏 Partnership agreement signed

GCK has been working hard to find and secure land for our future Farm Hub.

In October, GCK signed an agreement with the Cherries, a farming family in Hertfordshire, to continue to build our partnership and use 27 acres of their farm land. We will now be developing a legal contract for the farm site so that we can get building our dream Community Farm Hub!

Here is John Cherry signing the partnership agreement at Metroland Studios!

🎉 Certificate Handing – Congratulations to You All!

We were delighted to present six certificates at our recent community meal to learners who successfully completed their Level 1 Horticultural Course with us (with another six graduates sadly unable to attend the ceremony).

Over the year, we delivered 62 learning sessions covering a wide range of food-related themes, including food growing, food processing, cookery, and the politics of food. In total, 215 unique learners from South Kilburn and neighbouring London boroughs took part in our learning programmes.

We worked with two primary schools, one secondary school, and a local youth club, and ran four adult learning programmes, engaging people of different ages in growing and building food-related knowledge together.

Leslie presenting certificates to learners who completed the Level 1 Horticulture course

💐 A big year for our Community Garden, Granville Rec

It’s been a cheerful, thriving, and colourful year at Granville Rec. With the dedication of our wonderful gardeners, Aimée and Alfie, alongside all our amazing volunteers, the garden has harvested over 200kg of organic vegetables this year. These have been shared through the Good Food Box and community meals.

A wide range of culturally relevant crops have been grown, including callaloo, heritage chilli peppers, Vietnamese coriander, and climbing gourds. Alongside food growing, many varieties of flowers have been planted, not only to beautify the space, but also to support pollinators and to be shared with garden visitors.

We also planted 30+ medicinal herbs around the Rec borders, with educational signs highlighting their key medicinal properties and traditional uses.

Photos of seeds, huge squashes, flowers and medical herbs from our garden this year.

🍅 Veg Scheme Meet-Up

We were glad to take part in the Veg Scheme Meet-up organised by Better Food Trader, where growers and organisers came together to share reflections and exchange ideas on how to build and sustain veg schemes that benefit communities and strengthen local food systems.

Meet-up Instagram Post

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🗓️ What's on 🗓️

💼 Policy Hivemind Hack Day

🗓️ Time: Thurs 22 Jan, 10 am - 5 pm
📍 Place: Cooperation Town Hub, London, NW5 4RA

The first in-person Radical Policy Hack Day, organised by Red HR Community and co-hosted by Granville Community Kitchen and Cooperation Town.

The event brings together people from small community groups, arts organisations, worker co-ops, and radical non-profits to collectively explore Pay and Conflict, reimagining internal organisational policies grounded in anti-oppressive, care-based, and collective principles.

🍴 Lovely food will be shared!

🚌 Upcoming visits to our farm in 2026!

From the last farm visit: South Kilburn community walking to the farm

🗓️ Time: Dates TBC, running from March to October
📍 Location: Granville Community Farm Hub Site, Weston, Hertfordshire

We’re planning to run regular trips and events at the Granville Community Farm Hub throughout 2026, creating opportunities for us to spend time on the land, design the site, and build it together as a community.

If you’d like to visit the Farm Hub and be part of this journey, please sign up to our farm newsletter. We’ll be in touch with upcoming dates and opportunities.