As you come in the door you are greeted as a friend – a new friend or a returning friend – either way you are given a smile and you are made welcome. For a small donation which depends on the size of your household (eg. £2 for a four person household) you get a ticket which allows you to go around all the tables and choose a certain number of items. Nobody tells you what you should or shouldn’t have, you can choose what appeals.  

And there’s lots of choice. The tables are brimming with produce. It’s sorted into food types, so there’s a carb table with rice and pasta, bread and frozen chips, there’s a meat table, a table of cupboard stables in tins and packets, a table of treats. The last is fruit and veg, including yellow courgettes, purple sprouting broccoli, earthy potatoes, strawberries and gorgeously sweet cherry tomatoes. From this table you can have as much as you want. It feels like a market. It’s buzzing and lively and the volunteers chat with the customers, giving advice on the best way to prepare a mango, offering recipes for courgettes. Wendy Gillings, who works for the food bank, tells me they recently gave away all the butternut squashes for the first time as people learned new ways to prepare food. In the middle of the room there are tables where you can sit and have a cup of tea and a chat. Children are running around laughing, strawberry juice leaking from the corners of their mouths.  

I’d never been to a food bank before and I didn’t really know what to expect. Something quite dreary perhaps, with an aura of shame and desperation, where people were given bags of random donations with a sense of be grateful for what you’re given. This was nothing like that. It was a meeting place, a community hub in the best possible sense. The food bank also acts as a Warm Bank, and if people have a need to talk there is pastoral care on offer. One of the volunteers said to me how sad it is that food banks are necessary – and yes, it is sad that people have to be reliant of charity and the work of volunteers. But from that bad place something wonderful has blossomed at St. Philips.  

It’s not just happened by chance. St Philip’s Community Food Bank in Bilton Grange is run by Kia MacPherson who has puts in masses of effort to make this weekly event what it is, with food offered from all food groups, whilst the customers have autonomy – nobody is telling them what they must have. Some of the food comes from Fareshare, the food redistribution charity, and supermarkets. Sometimes there is a glut of something and this week is apple pies  – everyone goes home with at least one. Wendy tells me that she and Kia often make soup from the leftover vegetables at the end of the day, which they freeze in portions and give away the next week.  

A lot of the fruit and veg has been rejected at the ports by supermarkets. Because of new Brexit rules, it’s not in the providers benefit to return it, so rather than it being dumped, it gets shared out in foodbanks in the area. But a small amount has come from Alderman Kneeshaw Park where a group of volunteers have been growing food in raised beds around the pavilion. And in the future it maybe that more food can be grown in the community, as permission has been given for a section of the park near the bowling green to be turned into a community allotment.  

Anna Route works for Hull Food Partnership (hosted by Hull CVS) and has been involved in the development of a Food Strategy and Action Plan for Hull since 2020. She has been working with Sustainable Food Places and Incredible Edible to find ways to tackle food poverty through growing food. A motion on the Right to Grow was passed by Hull City Council in 2023 which allows members of the community to use public land for growing food. It is hoped that the policy implementation for this will be passed in January, with a simple process in place that grants the right for community cultivation. 

Alderman Kneeshaw Park will be a test bed and a trailblazer for this. Making the allotment is going to take a lot of work  – preparing the ground, planting, tending, watering, harvesting -and that will come from volunteers. The project relies of the good will of the community, and recent experience shows that that is there is spades (please excuse the pun). The suggested area is big enough to make a real difference and the food grown will go straight to the food bank, the users of the park and the community.  

As well as providing food, this project also gives back control. Food is power – those who have food can give it or withhold it, and those who have none are in the most desperate need. Helping people to grow their own food helps them to regain power in their own lives. There are also some other practical benefits. It will be a hub, where the community can come together to work, to share skills and share food. Skills learned in this project might help people into employment and on their road to lifelong learning, boosting self-confidence and self-reliance. As Debbie Morrell of FOAKP says ‘we are growing people as well as plants.’ 

The ground we stand on can sustain us – growing food is a miracle. Soon we will see the evidence of this  as Friends of Alderman Kneeshaw in partnership with St Phillips are providing an environment where miracles can grow.