Vic Health Food Summit

Abbotsford Convent Gallery / Collingwood Children’s Farm

A festival for food sector stakeholders to form a greater understanding of and appreciation for engaging with communities to design, test and evaluate programs, policy, advocacy and research.

Collaborated on the event design across neighbouring locations to create a well-rounded, varied guest conference experience.
Performed complex agenda planning with guests broken up into a different breakout session (and venues) to ensure conversations and outcomes from the summit were wide-spread across the food production industry.
Used social enterprise or purpose-driven organisations where possible, like Corner Store Network coffee, Free to Feed cooking classes and Mabu Mabu catering.

About the event

By showcasing the work of innovative Victorian-based community-engaged food system initiatives across programmatic, policy, advocacy, and research domains as exemplars of the Next Generation leadership principles, and creating reflexive space for facilitated group discussions around how to shift ways of working, the Festival intended to:

1. Amplify diverse voices in Victoria’s food movement to showcase how community-engaged approaches can support socially just food system transitions.

2. Reframe the challenges around food system transition through the lens of lived experiences and inequities in participation and access to resources.

3. Promote self and group reflection during and after the Festival on opportunities to shift ways of working to those that centre community voices and self-determination, and social equity and innovation.

4. Encourage the formation of new and strengthened ties among Victoria’s food movement that build trust and reciprocity and establish the foundations for collaborative working for the Well-Nourished Victoria Designing Coalition.