'We Feed the UK' exhibition celebrates women-led initiatives nurturing nature-friendly food

The We Feed the UK campaign has commissioned ten photographers and ten Hot Poets to tell ten stories, ranging from multigenerational, Black-led growing projects in London, to a majority-women workers cooperative in Edinburgh, via sustainable fishing along the South Coast.

The campaign's latest exhibition features work from photographer Sophie Gerrard on two groundbreaking projects: Lauriston Farm, a cooperative near Edinburgh, and Nikki Yoxall of Grampian Graziers in the Cairngorms. Both initiatives showcase local responses to global challenges of climate change, food security, and biodiversity loss.

Coordinated by The Gaia Foundation, We Feed The UK unites over 40 partners from the environment and arts sectors to galvanise new support for nature-friendly, community-centred, carbon-sequestering food production. 

It follows The Gaia Foundation's We Feed The World exhibition, which celebrated smallholder farmers across the globe, tackling the myth that industrial farming is the only path forward.

We Feed the UK is a national storytelling campaign pairing award-winning photographers and poets with the UK’s most inspiring food producers. These radical collaborations are raising awareness of the food system’s potential to positively address climate change, the biodiversity crisis and social injustice.

70% of the UK is farmland. The potential for this to become the place where we support biodiversity, sequester carbon and address so many of the other problems we are facing is enormous. The arts have the power to speak to the heart. Apathy is such a big barrier, and hope activates.

- Co-Director of The Gaia Foundation, Rowan Phillimore.

Cultivating Equality runs from 27th April – 31st May 2024 at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow and is free and open to all. The exhibition launches on 27th April as part Sustain's Good to Grow week, with a panel discussion and tour to follow on 11th May.

You can read more about the campaign and exhibition here.