Community Cooking – Toolkit 2

This community cooking tool kit is designed to help groups with all the essential knowledge they need to run their own cookery sessions and events. It will be useful for any community group, from a drop-in club thinking about using cookery as an educational message, to a church group thinking of setting up a community kitchen using donated produce. It is based on the experiences of community cooks running workshops & events for many years and describes how they have addressed some of the challenges when planning to set up and deliver sessions.

This guide has been written by founder member and Operation Farm food co-ordinator, Ali Shockledge. Ali has been active in community food for 17yrs, running community kitchens, cafes and events all over the Greater Manchester area. ‘It’s fair to say I’m obsessed with food and love sharing my knowledge and skills. I feel super proud when kids I’ve taught, share their dishes with me and know I inspired them just a little bit. Community food is both challenging and exhausting, it can be proper hard graft. But by the same token, it can be incredibly rewarding, and the kitchen vibe is like no other. I hope after reading this toolkit, you feel inspired to give community cooking a crack, trust me you won’t regret it!’. 

Published May 2025. This toolkit is one of a series of three authored by Operation Farm, others cover Community Growing and Community Apple Pressing activities.