Foodival features ...

A Grower 2018

This year's Tooting Foodival includes some new features alongside some familar favourites. We start this coming Friday evening with donations of fruit and vegetables from local growers. Can you spare anything from your allotment, window box or garden? These donations are used by our chefs to cook up a great sustainable feast in Hereward Rd on Saturday 14th.

Here's where to find the Foodival

The Top Tooting Cook Competition is an annual keenly fought tussle between local cooks to rustle up the best home made locally sourced dish. Follow the link to find out how to enter.


This year we have several special guests including May Webber from Butterfly Conservation and Ocean Plastic Warrior Mermaid Jasmine Seales. Don't miss the chance to catch a selfie in a sea shell!

Mermaid Jasmine Swims By Foodival

Of course we have a good array of sustainable and foodie stalls plus a long rosta of dance and music action via Dermot's Meltdown.

Dermot Melting Down

In a late change to the running order we expect to hear Dermot himself opening the show with his eclectic trug of homegrown songs and lovingly plucked instrumental covers!

So we look forward to seeing you this Saturday for what should be a great event. Friday evening for the much needed produce donations at Mushkil Aasaan 222 Upper Tooting Rd, SW17 7EW.

A full schedule of events is HERE.

Dermot's Meltdown at Foodival 2019

As ever we present a diverse range of local musicians and dancers at this year's Foodival. Dermot's 2nd Meltdown includes some familiar faces from Foodivals past and a few performers new to the Tooting streets. There may be one or two surprise additions before Saturday, but see below for details of who is confirmed so far.

Dan Caleb

Dan Caleb is a "London-based hyphen-loving alt-folk singer-songwriter" who performs solo. For more see Facebook, @dancalebmusic Spotify,  Video , Live Performance.

"Friends Music Circle" are Praful Gajjar, Ranjit Patel, and Hitesh Vyasa, a group with over 40 years experience of playing and singing a variety of Bollywood and fusion music. 

Ranjit from the Friends Music Circle will also be treating us to some of his renowned Karaoke.

Georgia Maria

Georgia Maria is a "Turbocharged acoustic-rocker let loose on London's live circuit. Powerful, darkly poetic modern rock. And Tool covers". See You Tube & Facebook

Local children from "NATYALAYA" Academy of Tamil Arts will be performing two cultural dances, the children will be a aged between 6 and 15 years

Performing a mix of well-known classics and some original material, Pensa & Read are a local Furzedown duo offering a taste of what Simon & Garfunkel might have sounded like if they were the severely overtired parents of 4 small children. Giles Read has plenty of Foodival pedigree, running the festival several times in its early years.

Resina Chowdhury

Usually seen as part of local blues-rock band we're being treated to Resina the solo artist today!

Troubadours de L'Avenue Verte

The 'Troubs' will play Irish, Disco, and Rhythm and Blues, in an unamplified set – just as they do when on tour: they travel by bicycle and carry their entire tour rig with them: which is their instruments, voices and personalities. Their M.O is to turn up at a local bar or cafe, turn out a tune and and if it goes down well they'll play some more, if not they're on to the next spot...feel free to join them and - if the spirit moves you - join in!

Vincent Burke

Vincent played Latitude Festival for the second time this Summer. His music seeks to be both melodic and not-stupid in the word department. The live band now contains the tasty added ingredients of Paul on double-bass, and Jawad on percussion. 

The debut Album ‘Over here in the Trees’ came out this year on Bandcamp and shook the Earth to its very foundations, but while Vincent's feet may be in the gutter his soul rides tempestuously on the stars.

#createfoodival

There's a lot to share about all that's happening at the Tooting Foodival on 14th September, so we'll cover all of these in separate blog posts.

We hope you enjoy the info about our creative offer for adults and young people. All invited to our base in the large yard part way down Hereward Road.

Here's your invitation 

to a diverse 6 hours of creativity: 

Our schedule:

11:00-12:30 We'll be micro-observing with Annie, Nikki & Chuck using magnifying glasses and a microscope, drawing and creating the first small worlds which we'll post on Instagram with the hashtag #createfoodival. We started with posting a first example today - have a look.
We can't wait to encourage visitors to be drawn to nature!
We'll continue these activities all day in parallel with the timed special sessions below.

12:30-1:30 We welcome May Webber from the UK national charity Butterfly Conservation
May will bring specimens of insects for us to explore with the help of her expertise and enthusiasm. With May and Nicola we'll draw and realise that what's good for insects in London is also good for people.
MAYBE we will be able to run moth-trapping locally on Friday night, and bring the catch in unharmed to observe and draw.

1:30-3:00 Nikki and Matt will be creating Microbrellas - our spin-off from this spring's Jellybrella project which created big jellyfish-sculptures using scrap umbrellas and linked sea life with ocean plastics.

Making beautiful detailed Microbrellas also aims to highlight how minute nano-plastics in the oceans are as damaging pollution challenge as large-scale waste.


We may have a visit from Jasmine the Mermaid and her stop ocean plastics campaign!


3:00-4:30 Paul will lead us to create easy-to-use small home planters out of re-purposed materials. You can take these home and keep growing fresh food this autumn.

All day Think Outside will join us in the creative yard with excellent outdoor learning activities complementary to #createfoodival - thanks for joining us, Beata & Think Outside

We'll display what you make on this inspiring sea turtle table made by Jamie Pattinson - it's a wonderful object with a plastic waste message.

The #createfoodival facilitators look forward 

to seeing you on the 14th from 11:00 to 5:00. 

And there's all the rest 

of the Foodival to enjoy, too!

Vegetables, Fruit, Creativity ...

The Tooting Foodival on 14th Sept would love and appreciate your veg and your fruit to help us co-create our low food-miles community feast! You can donate produce on the day or the evening before - from 6.30pm to 8.30pm at Mushkil Aasaan (SW17 7EW). When you see the range and quality of what grows locally, you'll be amazed! Thanks so much for any contribution you can share - simple or exotic, small or large. Here are some examples from recent years, starting with Tooting tomatoes picked in the heat last Sunday (they'll last until the 14th if we make them into sauce).

How will you feed your imagination at the Tooting Foodival? The Foodival mixes sustainability, food, growing, fun, wellbeing and reducing waste. We're going to offer an activity which will inspire you to be creative: all ages welcome. We'll have fruit peel from Tooting's juice bars, Foodival veg scraps, beautiful saved-from-waste materials from Work and Play Scrapstore - South London and Wandsworth Oasis and stories from our Jellybrella project to help you create playful magical micro worlds. We'll tag photos of what you make on Instagram at #createfoodival and once you start creating, you'll see the potential for imaginative re-use everywhere! 

Enjoy our examples in the photos - subtle objects of mystery and fascination! We look forward to what's dreamed up on Sept 14th. As well as creative activities there's the main event: community cooking and the shared feast. Plus live bands, the soap box, boutique stalls and much more...for free! 

Sophie Rushton-Smith To Run TTC

We are delighted to announce that Sophie Rushton-Smith from The Corner Plot will be coordinating this year's Top Tooting Cook Competition at Foodival on the 14 September. 

Sophie was Top Tooting Cook in 2015

In 2015 Sophie won the prestigious TTC award for her use of locally grown vegetables to make a delicious colourful roast vegetable medley. 

Who will be this year's Top Tooting Cook? Could It Be YOU?

There are lots of lovely prizes to be won. Want to take up the challenge? 

See here for TTC FAQs and the 2019 Registration form.

Email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com with any queries.

Three Weeks to Foodival 2019

This year’s Tooting Foodival is only three weeks away! 

Our annual sustainable food celebration takes place in central Tooting between 11am and 5pm on Saturday 14th September. We will close half of Hereward Rd and fill the street with cooking activities, stalls showcasing local products and organisations, creative activities, music and soap box talks. 

The premise of Foodival as ever is that we seek donations of fruit and vegetables from local growers that will be cooked up by local Tooting chefs and served to you, the hungry public, as the central part of our street festival. We seek to show that you don’t need to import food from miles away; you can enjoy sustainable locally grown low food mile delicious fare right here in SW17. 

I Grew This!

We collect donations of fruit and vegetables the evening before (Friday 13th September, this year) where we also hope to immortalise each of our growers in the now famous “I Grew This” photos. This is also the time when prospective entrants to the Top Tooting Cook Competition can pick up produce to conjure a prize winning dish for the following day’s competition. There will be some great prizes! 


If you would like to get involved there are several possible ways to do so: 

1) Are you growing any vegetables or fruit that you could donate? We would be ever so grateful, as Foodival only happens due to home grown produce. 

2) Would you like to help out on the day? We have a reliable team but can always do with a hand from anyone who wants to get involved in some random community fun! 

3) Do you fancy entering the Top Tooting Cook Competition? What is your speciality dish that will wow the judges? Or would you like to be a judge? Here is all the TTC info you need: details of the TTC and the registration form. Good luck and we look forward to what you make!

4) Do you have something to say... about food, sustainability, plastics or anything a bit related? You could book yourself a spot on the Soap Box! 

Whatever, contact us on transitiontowntooting@gmail.com to find out more, check us out on Instragram @tootingfoodival or on facebook

We look forward to celebrating local food and local cooking with you on the streets of Tooting in September!

What Are You Growing?

It's been a strange old summer, what with torrential rain for much of June and scorching weather for quite a lot of July. As usual some of my vegetable patch has done well despite this, while other parts have got a bit confused!

One area of success is runner beans which are cropping plentifully. 

Tooting Foodival is on Instagram these days and as of this evening we have 1,029 followers so we hope we are doing something interesting in our local community! Amazing that this event has been going since 2008!

Tooting Community Garden at the weekend

Do get involved as a grower, a cook or an eater on 14th September or join the gang who make the whole thing happen - you can do as little or as much as you like!

We enjoyed meeting loads of you at the National Park City Celebration at Tooting Community Garden yesterday and hope to see you again in September if not before.

Time to be growing for the Foodival!

There are over two growing months until the Tooting Foodival.

That's plenty of time to grow local vegetables from scratch to donate or cook for the Foodival community festival on September 14th.

What can you grow well in your garden, containers or window box in a couple of months?
Who can you get involved? There's a school summer holiday soon, and could the children be in charge? The RHS has a guide to getting children interested in gardening, here.

 
The varieties below will all grow fast.
Click on the vegetables in the list for more information from gardening websites.
Are some of these new to you? Try them out:

Coriander

Cress

Lettuce

Mizuna

Mustard greens

Radish

Rocket

White turnips

Kohl Rabi  and Beetroot
are worth a try too.

Click here to download a copy of these suggestions with the links to the gardening websites.

What else could be grown quickly? Please share your ideas with us all: Tooting Foodival and Tooting Community Garden are on Instagram, and the garden is on Facebook too.

Happy growing and see you at the Foodival - it will be great to see your produce!

Foodival 2019 - Sat 14th Sept

The 12th annual Tooting Foodival takes place this autumn on Saturday 14th September. The festival aims to encourage people to grow fruit and vegetables locally, cook healthy food with local produce and connect with others to enjoy eating the results!  We are in the planning stages for this year's event and welcome anyone who wants to get involved.

We will create a street feast for up to 500 cooked up from home grown and donated vegetables and fruit, there will be and array of local live music and of course your chance to win the Top Tooting Cook Competition.

We already know we need help with the following:

• Co-ordinating stalls 
• Social media and PR
• Connecting with community groups

and probably lots of other things we haven't yet thought of!  It's a great team effort to create Tooting Foodival and you can get involved in any way you like.

EMAIL US to find out more.