[Music]
my name’s coin Bell and I run a
nonprofit called real junk food
Manchester and we saw speed that would
otherwise go to waste I have beautiful
chefs who transform it into amazing
meals and we serve all of those meals on
a page you feel basis and in September
last year we opened Manchester’s
first-ever waste food page you feel
restaurant so there’s a few different
elements to what we do and there’s a few
different things that I could talk about
waste food sustainability hunger poverty
but what I want to talk about today is
inclusion and exclusion and how I hope
we can start to make some real social
change in that area so one of the aims
of our project has always been to bring
a huge range of people together around
the really simple act of sharing a meal
and we do that through our page you feel
model so first things first
what’s page you feel it’s pretty simple
it does exactly what it says on the tin
our customers come in enjoy a meal I
hope and they are genuinely welcomed to
pay as they feel and how people
interpret that is entirely up to them
and different for different people
some people consider what a fair price
for the meal they’ve just had would be
if they went somewhere with set prices
and they leave that some people leave an
amount they want to support the work
that we do some people leave whatever
they can spare some people give that
time their energy their skills to the
project by volunteering and some people
leave nothing and any and all of those
situations are ok with us and we have
known suggested donation no minimum
donation and our payment system is
completely anonymous because the thing
that really matters to us is that people
feel welcome and that we just get a vast
range of people together and we get
people sometimes trying to pigeonhole us
a little bit you know they’ll say is it
a project for the homeless and we say no
it’s a project for people with stomachs
it’s a project for people who eat
and when because this really is not a
project about food poverty sometimes I
almost think it’s the opposite there’s a
lot of projects out there that target
people in food poverty and they’re
essential and they’re stopping people
dying and I’m never criticizing those
projects and the simple fact is if you
target people in food poverty what you
also do is isolate them you separate
them from everyone else so what we
wanted to do was develop something that
could sit alongside that that was not
about targeting people in food poverty
but it was about bringing everyone back
into something mainstream so what we’ve
made it’s just down the road that is
we’ve created I hope a cool City sent a
restaurant with a consistently great
food offer a place where people want to
go and it just happens that anyone is
welcome regardless of income or status
and everyone’s welcome to pay as they
feel so the aim here is to bring a huge
range of people together and we do that
because we feel really strongly that
there’s a profound positive impact in
inviting people who’ve been excluded
people who find themselves marginalized
back into a positive mainstream social
setting and we see that impacts every
day and it’s really small and it’s
really ordinary and it’s absolutely
profound it’s I consider it now to be
the absolute basis of community it’s the
impact of having a warm welcome the
impact of being given a menu choice the
impact of being giving proper cutlery of
being given a porcelain cook rather than
a paper cook it’s the impact of having a
really normal social experience where
you’re not a service user and it’s not
about your need or your issue it’s just
a really ordinary really positive social
experience that I’m guessing most of us
get to have every day and at a certain
point when your income drops and we are
talking about more
that kind of social experience tops for
so since about 2008 2009 when our
economy went a bit nuts kind of cluster
and there’s been a really significant
rise in the use of food banks food banks
were never meant to be a long-term
solution it’s called the emergency
provision for a reason and we’re talking
about nearly a decade now and there are
more and more people that are more and
more reliant on food banks and what’s
happened without any of us really
thinking about it is we’ve created this
quite dangerous two-tier system we’ve
got cafes and restaurants for people
you’ve got money and we’ve got projects
for people without if you’ve got money
you go where you want you buy what you
want and you eat what you want and if
you haven’t got money you get sent
somewhere different and you get what
you’re given or at the very best your
options are severely limited and the
long-term implications of that on your
physical nutritional health
psychological health and well-being
culturally socially the long-term
implications of getting sent somewhere
separate and getting what you’re given
are huge and they’re hugely negative so
we want to try and bring everybody back
in bring everyone back together and part
of that process is about trying to work
out what do the boundaries have to be
what do the social rules have to be so
that the widest range of people possible
can come together and exist in a space
and be as comfortable with each other as
they possibly can what’s the boundary
what’s the difference between people
just being weird
sorry divert thus an anti-social
behavior and it’s genuinely not as
simple as you might think
and it’s involved our team having a
really hard look at ourselves you know
what are our boundaries what are our
social rules what are our judgments what
are our values and it’s always going to
be a work in progress I think that’s
I think that’s right I think it has to
be partly because people continue to
surprise us both in amazing ways and
what people can take you to surprise us
[Music]
so we’re trying to work out what’s this
community code and one of the things
that we found that’s really helpful
towards that kind of levels things is
something that I really want to talk
about so we we have a really diverse
range people come to us and we have
behaviors crop up everyday that are
let’s say tricky and when certain
behaviors crop up one of the things we
found that really levels it is to say to
ourselves okay what would the response
to that behavior be if that behavior was
exhibited by a white middle-class
middle-aged man in a suit and that
became our little mantra the restaurant
had been open about three months and we
were told by our landlord that there’d
been some complaints about our operation
and one of those complaints was that
there were gangs of homeless people
blocking the pavement and smoking and
that had been labeled antisocial
behavior so we go out to the front of
the restaurant look down the street and
there are indeed there’s three guys who
you would say were pretty obviously
Street homeless and they’re standing in
the street and they’re smoking and
they’re chatting loudly and about 100
yards from them there are three
middle-aged middle-class men in suits
smoking and trained quite loudly but the
only complaint that we’d received was
about the guys who are homeless so
here’s what we know and it’s not rocket
science people who are disadvantaged
people who are Street homeless people
who’ve become marginalized their
behavior is judged more harshly their
behavior is more likely to be judged as
anti-social behavior people who are
disadvantaged suffer more disadvantage
and round and round around we go and how
do you even begin to level that how do
you even start to dig yourself out of
that hole when you get to the stage
where you’re present on the street
your existence essentially has been
classified as anti-social behavior and
the whole issue of homelessness and
drugs and alcohol and housing insecurity
and difficult relationships and I mean
it’s a huge multifaceted interrelated
complex issue and we all have difficult
feelings about it and we’ve all you know
even in the generation that we’re in
maybe we’ve all absorbed some difficult
views or some judgements from our family
of origin but however you feel about
homelessness and however you feel about
people who are homeless however you feel
about these people that you walk past
every day we can marginalize the simple
fact is our current methods are not
working
we’ve tried excluding people we’ve tried
telling them to go away we tell them
they’re not wanted and shockingly
they’re not spontaneously generating
self-respect and motivation as a
strategy doesn’t really seem to be
working out for us so the simple fact is
we need to try something different and I
think what we need to do is start some
really difficult conversations we need
to start some really uncomfortable
conversations we need to accept the the
process of helping people to recover
it’s going to be messy it’s going to be
real it’s going to challenge us all and
it’s going to have to happen in our
community we need to stop sweeping the
problem down the street and making
people go away because we don’t know how
to deal with our own feelings we need to
find ways of inviting people who’ve been
excluded back in to mainstream community
life and I believe the models like pay
as you feel can do that we also need to
find a way to normalize people who need
support accessing services and utilities
that have capacity like the hundreds of
showers that sit in office buildings in
city centers unused
SUIM 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. every day so for
me this topic real change the most
important things that we could do are to
admit that we’ve got a real problem to
own it and to be willing to see it to
stop trying to sweep the problem down
the street to massively grow our
capacity for accepting and tolerating
the real messy process of recovery and
change and to hugely expand our view
about what a successful and diverse
community might look like because from
my point of view it could be a hell of a
lot more interesting than you think it is
my name’s coin Bell and I run a
nonprofit called real junk food
Manchester and we saw speed that would
otherwise go to waste I have beautiful
chefs who transform it into amazing
meals and we serve all of those meals on
a page you feel basis and in September
last year we opened Manchester’s
first-ever waste food page you feel
restaurant so there’s a few different
elements to what we do and there’s a few
different things that I could talk about
waste food sustainability hunger poverty
but what I want to talk about today is
inclusion and exclusion and how I hope
we can start to make some real social
change in that area so one of the aims
of our project has always been to bring
a huge range of people together around
the really simple act of sharing a meal
and we do that through our page you feel
model so first things first
what’s page you feel it’s pretty simple
it does exactly what it says on the tin
our customers come in enjoy a meal I
hope and they are genuinely welcomed to
pay as they feel and how people
interpret that is entirely up to them
and different for different people
some people consider what a fair price
for the meal they’ve just had would be
if they went somewhere with set prices
and they leave that some people leave an
amount they want to support the work
that we do some people leave whatever
they can spare some people give that
time their energy their skills to the
project by volunteering and some people
leave nothing and any and all of those
situations are ok with us and we have
known suggested donation no minimum
donation and our payment system is
completely anonymous because the thing
that really matters to us is that people
feel welcome and that we just get a vast
range of people together and we get
people sometimes trying to pigeonhole us
a little bit you know they’ll say is it
a project for the homeless and we say no
it’s a project for people with stomachs
it’s a project for people who eat
and when because this really is not a
project about food poverty sometimes I
almost think it’s the opposite there’s a
lot of projects out there that target
people in food poverty and they’re
essential and they’re stopping people
dying and I’m never criticizing those
projects and the simple fact is if you
target people in food poverty what you
also do is isolate them you separate
them from everyone else so what we
wanted to do was develop something that
could sit alongside that that was not
about targeting people in food poverty
but it was about bringing everyone back
into something mainstream so what we’ve
made it’s just down the road that is
we’ve created I hope a cool City sent a
restaurant with a consistently great
food offer a place where people want to
go and it just happens that anyone is
welcome regardless of income or status
and everyone’s welcome to pay as they
feel so the aim here is to bring a huge
range of people together and we do that
because we feel really strongly that
there’s a profound positive impact in
inviting people who’ve been excluded
people who find themselves marginalized
back into a positive mainstream social
setting and we see that impacts every
day and it’s really small and it’s
really ordinary and it’s absolutely
profound it’s I consider it now to be
the absolute basis of community it’s the
impact of having a warm welcome the
impact of being given a menu choice the
impact of being giving proper cutlery of
being given a porcelain cook rather than
a paper cook it’s the impact of having a
really normal social experience where
you’re not a service user and it’s not
about your need or your issue it’s just
a really ordinary really positive social
experience that I’m guessing most of us
get to have every day and at a certain
point when your income drops and we are
talking about more
that kind of social experience tops for
so since about 2008 2009 when our
economy went a bit nuts kind of cluster
and there’s been a really significant
rise in the use of food banks food banks
were never meant to be a long-term
solution it’s called the emergency
provision for a reason and we’re talking
about nearly a decade now and there are
more and more people that are more and
more reliant on food banks and what’s
happened without any of us really
thinking about it is we’ve created this
quite dangerous two-tier system we’ve
got cafes and restaurants for people
you’ve got money and we’ve got projects
for people without if you’ve got money
you go where you want you buy what you
want and you eat what you want and if
you haven’t got money you get sent
somewhere different and you get what
you’re given or at the very best your
options are severely limited and the
long-term implications of that on your
physical nutritional health
psychological health and well-being
culturally socially the long-term
implications of getting sent somewhere
separate and getting what you’re given
are huge and they’re hugely negative so
we want to try and bring everybody back
in bring everyone back together and part
of that process is about trying to work
out what do the boundaries have to be
what do the social rules have to be so
that the widest range of people possible
can come together and exist in a space
and be as comfortable with each other as
they possibly can what’s the boundary
what’s the difference between people
just being weird
sorry divert thus an anti-social
behavior and it’s genuinely not as
simple as you might think
and it’s involved our team having a
really hard look at ourselves you know
what are our boundaries what are our
social rules what are our judgments what
are our values and it’s always going to
be a work in progress I think that’s
I think that’s right I think it has to
be partly because people continue to
surprise us both in amazing ways and
what people can take you to surprise us
[Music]
so we’re trying to work out what’s this
community code and one of the things
that we found that’s really helpful
towards that kind of levels things is
something that I really want to talk
about so we we have a really diverse
range people come to us and we have
behaviors crop up everyday that are
let’s say tricky and when certain
behaviors crop up one of the things we
found that really levels it is to say to
ourselves okay what would the response
to that behavior be if that behavior was
exhibited by a white middle-class
middle-aged man in a suit and that
became our little mantra the restaurant
had been open about three months and we
were told by our landlord that there’d
been some complaints about our operation
and one of those complaints was that
there were gangs of homeless people
blocking the pavement and smoking and
that had been labeled antisocial
behavior so we go out to the front of
the restaurant look down the street and
there are indeed there’s three guys who
you would say were pretty obviously
Street homeless and they’re standing in
the street and they’re smoking and
they’re chatting loudly and about 100
yards from them there are three
middle-aged middle-class men in suits
smoking and trained quite loudly but the
only complaint that we’d received was
about the guys who are homeless so
here’s what we know and it’s not rocket
science people who are disadvantaged
people who are Street homeless people
who’ve become marginalized their
behavior is judged more harshly their
behavior is more likely to be judged as
anti-social behavior people who are
disadvantaged suffer more disadvantage
and round and round around we go and how
do you even begin to level that how do
you even start to dig yourself out of
that hole when you get to the stage
where you’re present on the street
your existence essentially has been
classified as anti-social behavior and
the whole issue of homelessness and
drugs and alcohol and housing insecurity
and difficult relationships and I mean
it’s a huge multifaceted interrelated
complex issue and we all have difficult
feelings about it and we’ve all you know
even in the generation that we’re in
maybe we’ve all absorbed some difficult
views or some judgements from our family
of origin but however you feel about
homelessness and however you feel about
people who are homeless however you feel
about these people that you walk past
every day we can marginalize the simple
fact is our current methods are not
working
we’ve tried excluding people we’ve tried
telling them to go away we tell them
they’re not wanted and shockingly
they’re not spontaneously generating
self-respect and motivation as a
strategy doesn’t really seem to be
working out for us so the simple fact is
we need to try something different and I
think what we need to do is start some
really difficult conversations we need
to start some really uncomfortable
conversations we need to accept the the
process of helping people to recover
it’s going to be messy it’s going to be
real it’s going to challenge us all and
it’s going to have to happen in our
community we need to stop sweeping the
problem down the street and making
people go away because we don’t know how
to deal with our own feelings we need to
find ways of inviting people who’ve been
excluded back in to mainstream community
life and I believe the models like pay
as you feel can do that we also need to
find a way to normalize people who need
support accessing services and utilities
that have capacity like the hundreds of
showers that sit in office buildings in
city centers unused
SUIM 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. every day so for
me this topic real change the most
important things that we could do are to
admit that we’ve got a real problem to
own it and to be willing to see it to
stop trying to sweep the problem down
the street to massively grow our
capacity for accepting and tolerating
the real messy process of recovery and
change and to hugely expand our view
about what a successful and diverse
community might look like because from
my point of view it could be a hell of a
lot more interesting than you think it is
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