Debrief from People's Assembly on Food : 27/01/26

On Tuesday 27th January Octopus Community Network, the Islington Climate Centre and Islington Food Partnership facilitated Islington’s first People's Assembly on Food.

What is a People’s Assembly? 

A People’s Assembly is a simple, welcoming way for a community to think, talk and act together. With facilitators to guide the process, everyone gets space to speak, listen and contribute ideas for collective action. 

This Assembly brought together 70 people from across the borough to shape the future of food in Islington. We discussed what works, what needs to change, and what we can build together. We explored key themes, with speakers at the beginning of the Assembly to set the scene, before enjoying a community meal together, and then taking part in facilitated discussion tables.

Specialist speaker presentations:

• Politics of Food, Lewis Basset

• Supply Chains and Community Food, Damien Conrad, Felix Project

• Food Waste (Video 1, Video 2), Matthew Homer, Islington Council

• Right to Grow and Food Resilience, Rachel Dring, Sustain

Topics we explored on the tables (click to see outputs): 

Food Waste

Food Supply Chains / Community Food

Right to Grow 1

Right to Grow 2

Access to affordable & healthy Food

Sustainable Food Choices

We also used technology to dynamically capture and synthesise the various conversations in real time. Please see the document links below :

• Overall summary

• Table by Table summary

There was an enormous amount of energy in the room, as well as the feeling that there is much that we can do as individuals and a Community to tackle all of these issues.

Note that one of the subjects with most momentum is Right to Grow - you can find out more about it by clicking below:

Right to Grow Site

We will be exploring next steps and plans for future work, so do get in touch if you’d like to get involved!

Huge thanks to all of our wonderful volunteer facilitators and scribes who helped the Assembly run so smoothly.

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Further Reading:

What is a People's assembly https://www.islingtonclimatecentre.co.uk/post/what-is-a-people-s-assembly-1 further reading here  

Here are details from previous assemblies convened by Islington Climate centre 

• Heat and Shade Assembly – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cBklc-0oyA   2 min video June 2024

• Flooding Assembly Nov 2024– featured publication on the Government website  https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/134276/pdf/

• Retrofit Assembly June 2025 –  https://www.islingtonclimatecentre.co.uk/post/people-s-assembly-on-retrofit-recap-outcomes social media