School of Food Toolkit

Published: 2023
Partners: LEAP Federation, Chefs in Schools, Hackney School of Food
Funded by: William Sutton Prize (Clarion Housing Group)
Graphic Design: Marine Duroselle
Illustration: Jean Jullien
Photography: Jim Stephenson
Download: School of Food Toolkit

In 2021 Surman Weston and the charity Chefs in Schools won the William Sutton Prize for Social Innovation. The £20,000 prize fund was used to create a School of Food Toolkit –  a free-to-access open-source guide for creating your very own School of Food.

The Hackney School of Food was completed by Surman Weston in Spring 2020 as the flagship pilot project for the Chefs in Schools charity, supporting their research and development programme and acting as a training hub. The positive social impact that it has had on its community has been astounding, and it has demonstrated that with a creative vision, an unused space can be transformed into a creative educational space for pupils and a place to bring a community together through food.

While there are many schools who make brilliant use of their outside space, many more lack the vision and know-how to do this in a cost-effective way. We know from our extensive experience working with schools that any underused space, even one the size of a small classroom, can be transformed to deliver far-reaching social impact.

At the Hackney School of Food, we employed a simple, adjustable, and easily replicable design, which has now been tested to inform the School of Food toolkit. The small scale and simplicity of the design means that it can be implemented with minimal budgets and construction knowledge. The Toolkit is a way of sharing the Hackney School of Food model with other schools to create nurturing environments for children to engage with food growing and harvesting, cooking, and nutrition.

With the help of the William Sutton Prize, Surman Weston and Chefs in Schools hope to equip and inspire schools across the country to teach their children how to grow and cook healthy food, put food at the heart of the school curriculum, and inspire the next generation to improve their long-term physical and mental health.