π° Happy Easter π°Hi friends, We wish you a sunny and joyful Easter holiday. Leslie and Capri are writing on behalf of the Community Meal team and our wonderful volunteers to send our warm greetings. Community meals have always been at the heart of GCK. In many ways, they are where the story of GCK began. 12 years ago, Dee and Leslie founded Granville Community Kitchen in our beloved community centre, The Granville, where we started serving regular community meals and hosting events that brought people together around food, conversation and creativity.  During COVID, we began running drop-in food aid sessions. While this helped many people during a difficult time, we have always believed that food aid cannot be the long-term solution to hunger. The real issue is not food itself, but access to good food, often shaped by poverty and inequality. Since losing access to The Granville in 2023, we have been running community meals across several temporary locations in South Kilburn. In May 2025, we had to pause our Friday community meals due to venue restrictions, but we continue to run Wednesday community meals and weekly food aid, alongside wellbeing activities such as yoga and women-only exercise sessions.  Our delicious meals π For us, GCK has always been about food and community β bringing people together to eat, support one another, and build something stronger while fighting for a better future. Thank you for being part of this community with us. β¨ Highlights of this season β¨ π₯ͺ St. Luke's Church Kitchen Upgrade! We have to have sandwiches for 8 weeks while the St Lukes kitchen was out of action this Spring. We had a schedule of things to do together to make the sandwiches more palatable.  Students from Northeastern University are helping to make Save The Rec banner at one of the craft nights π³ A Season of Cooking and Learning at the OK Club Over the past months, Riham has been running educational cooking sessions with young people at the OK Club. Here she shares a few reflections on the sessions and the wonderful engagement from the children.
-pic-1-(1).jpg) Vegetable fajitas made by a young learner βοΈ Co-design workshops with Sib In March, we held two in-person co-design workshops with architect Sib Trigg, who has rich experience working with community groups. As the Farm Hub is a community-centred space, we want the people who will use it to help shape its development from the very beginning. These workshops were a great starting point for identifying who we should invite to take part in future site design discussions and what the proper way is. The workshops began with a role-playing exercise, where the farm team and the steering group imagined in detail what a typical day at the farm might look like for different stakeholders. We explored which areas they might visit and what kinds of infrastructure and facilities they might need.  Through discussions facilitated by Sib, we began to identify the tensions and constraints that need to be considered when designing the site. The conversations also helped clarify the different phases of the farmβs development and which infrastructures will be essential in the early stages. The workshops were incredibly valuable, helping us get on the same page, communicate ideas more clearly, and take the first steps towards visualising what the future of the farm could look like. π Meet up with the advisory group of the Farm Hub In February 2025, we established an Advisory Group to support the development of the Farm Hub. The group brings together a range of experience and perspectives across food systems, community organising, activism, and urban research. In December, two new members joined the group, further strengthening the collective knowledge and support around the project.
We had our first meeting with everyone together in January this year. A huge thank you to all of them for being so generous with their time and for sharing their valuable knowledge and experience. Their encouragement and belief in the project mean a lot to us. π¨ A Great Week with Northeastern Students We had 10 young people from Northeastern University come and work with us for a week in March. They painted the undercoat for the graffiti piece at Metroland, helped us start our Save the Rec Banner and helped with food aid and sorting out our storage space. They were wonderful and we miss them!  Image from Northeastern University β¬οΈ ποΈ What's on ποΈ πͺ Garden Volunteering at Granville Rec  ποΈ Time: From 1st April, every Wednesday 11 am-2 pm through the growing season Garden volunteering sessions are coming back. β SAVE THE RECο½Join us on the National Day of Action for Nature
 ποΈ Time: Saturday 18 April, 12β4 pm Why are we coming together? Brent Council plans to build Block D (14 homes, 4 storeys high) on our beloved Granville Rec.Granville Rec is home to our community garden and vegetable growing project. It is a place where people come together to grow food, learn new skills, support wellbeing, and build connections. Whatβs happening on the day:
π’ Updates and discussion about the future of the garden We also want to open up a wider conversation about the food ecosystem and the need for transformative change, by showing our other programmes, including: The Good Food Box β an affordable, radical organic veg box (with fruit, veg tasting and homemade veg cakes available) Granville Community Farm Hub β an agroecological farm hub connecting the urban South Kilburn community with land in the countryside π΅ The Herbal Medicine course  ποΈ Dates: Starts from Sunday, 17th May, every Sunday π Location: Granville Rec community garden, NW6 5AR (or Granville Road Play Area on Google Maps) Come and join us as we explore the living green pharmacy that grows all around us - even while living in the city. This course will help us reconnect back to simple and accessible knowledge about how medicinal plants can support our health. We will experience and relearn how our intuitive senses can inform and guide us to better understand which plants can support us while navigating day to day ailments and how to incorporate 'food as medicine' into our daily lives to promote better health and prevent disease. The course will use a combination of: evidence based research, basic physiology and anatomy, plant botany and chemistry, folklore and traditional knowledge. We will expand and integrate different ways of learning to feel confident and inspired to use safe home remedies for ourselves, our families, friends and communities. Relearning the healing plants that would have been common knowlege in past generations through growing, foraging and making medicine is one key way to build back resilience, respect and an intimate sense of nature nourishment that these times we live in are calling for. π§ββοΈ Facilitation team AimΓ©e Georgiou Lormand will be guiding this course - she is a qualified Medicinal Herbalist, body worker, gardener and community food grower who is passionate about making holistic healthcare and local organic food accessible to all. Elise Yarde who will be assisting the course is a community food grower, budding herbalist, facilitator and activist who deeply believes in the healing power of plants and community. Come and begin your herbal journey by joining us on this 6 week plant adventure! We also have regular community meals, yoga classes running every week. β¬οΈ π₯ Want a weekly organic veg bag? Get fresh, seasonal produce grown by small-scale growers across the UK and Europe β plus veggies straight from NW6!  π Missed our previous newsletters?
π’ A message to our anonymous donors Over the years, weβve received generous donations from people who chose to stay anonymous. If this was you, we would love to hear from you so we can say a proper THANK YOU π§‘! Please feel free to contact info@granvillecommunitykitchen.org.uk. Wishing you lots of enjoyment in the longer days and the energy of spring.
Get in touch: info@granvillecommunitykitchen.org.uk
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