Current global trends in meat consumption are unsustainable, with large-scale livestock production carrying significant environmental costs - greenhouse gas emissions, land and water usage, and animal health and welfare concerns. Man Food is a project that brings together community partners with university researchers to explore questions around food and the environment, specifically in relation to men's consumption practices. The project is not about directly changing men's behaviour, but rather about seeing if there are different ways in which men can relate to food that might benefit health, lifestyle and the environment. It comes out of two previous projects looking at food and community, and involves a series of food workshops with men, the production of a new art performance, a toolkit for organisations that addresses the project's central concerns, and a series of discussion lunches as part of Healthy City Week in Bristol. Researchers Emma Roe and Paul Hurley are employing an approach they call "becoming an ecological citizen", as a way of thinking about the individual's relationship to the environment as one of citizenship rather than purely of (ethical) consumerism. It employs a hands-on and creative approach to connect people to issues like food through activities like cooking and eating. This enables different conversations to take place that might enable people to rethink their practices and beliefs around food. In the context of Man Food, we are interested in how this approach might be applied to men, in thinking about protein diversification - eating a range of protein like vegetables, beans, eggs and fish, as well as / instead of meat - to support organisations keen to address men's food choices in relation to personal health and environmentally-motivated behaviours. The university researchers will work in partnership with Windmill Hill City Farm, a charity that provides educational, recreational and therapeutic activities by giving the local community opportunities to experience farming in the heart of the city. Along with Knowle West Health Park's group Man Alive, the farm will be involved in the development of a series of food workshops with men from a range of backgrounds across Bristol. Man Food will also have an artist working on the project, who will use video and other approaches to creatively respond to ideas emerging in the interactive workshops. These will form the basis of an art performance created for the At-Bristol planetarium, a video of which will also be available on the Man Food website. Over the course of the project, the team will develop the 'becoming an ecological citizen' approach in specific relation to men and protein, and will produce a toolkit, available digitally, for other organisations wanting to explore similar ideas and activities. Central to the researchers' way of working is to be in dialogue with WHCF and KWHP, to ensure outputs like the toolkit and workshops are the most relevant and useful they can be. The team will also work to open up conversations around this subject (from this project as well as from the learning from previous projects on which it builds), through public discussion events called Man Food Picnics, during Healthy City Week. It will also extend conversations through social media and through relationships with other organisations, like At-Bristol, Flexitarian Bristol, Hubbub, The Matthew Tree Project and The Edible Landscape Movement.

The scale of change needed to transform UK food systems for health, social justice and environment requires new ideas, organisational models and collaborative approaches that can meaningfully engage individuals and communities. Existing top-down approaches to the challenge of sustainable food provision and diet have failed to tackle the crisis of poor dietary health and sustainable food production. Our proposed research will focus on the distinctive role of social enterprises as an integral part of a more diverse system, exploring and enhancing their unique contribution to food systems that are more inclusive, sustainable and healthy. Social enterprise are organisations that are trading with a core social and environmental purpose, and make up 9% of the business population. Initial work by the project team and partners reveals how social enterprises and their community engagement around food and wellbeing can occur through a variety of activities, including community growing spaces and distribution schemes, leisure and fitness centres, children's nurseries and other community-based services. The proposed research will examine the extent to which such 'bottom up' approaches that build on local understandings, networks and capabilities have further unrealised potential to engage diverse communities and other organisational actors (private, public and civil society), and thus catalyse the expansion of sustainable and healthy local food systems across the UK. To this end, our transdisciplinary team, led by researchers who are part of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, brings together expertise from the natural, social and policy sciences, with specialisms in social enterprise, sustainable consumption, nutrition and environmental life cycle assessment. This team will work with six partner social enterprises in England, Scotland and Wales and six support/policy organisations all of whom contribute to the research design at all stages. This will ensure the potential for transformational impact on policy and practice is maximised. The research will include the following main elements: -Analysis of the range and types of social enterprise involved in developing local food systems and connecting people to growing spaces and other green areas. -Examination of the scientifically measurable outcomes of the interventions on the supply chain, environment and nutrition, and identification of good practice in measuring such impacts. -Case studies of social enterprises focused on food and community wellbeing to examine how they engage their communities, their ownership/governance structures, partnerships and innovative practices, the challenges they face and their support needs. -Exploration of the different understandings of sustainable food and diets within diverse communities. -Mapping the wider food network, key stakeholders and supportive ecosystem in each case study locality. -Exploring how transformational change can come about from scaling up social enterprise activity and policy change. Central to the project is the active participation of our social enterprise partners, their staff and community members, with particular attention to developing their research skills and capacity, as well as those of the academic researchers to enable participatory research. The research findings will be used to co-design resources and toolkits to support the scaling-up or replication of successful models and innovations and the sharing of good practice across the country. This is not without its challenges and the project will examine the various barriers and constraining factors and how they can best be addressed. In addition to good practice guides for social enterprises and other organisations across the country, policy briefings will be prepared, focusing on the different levels of local, regional and national policy making.