Koldings first food strategy is now in public hearing!
One of the most important outcomes of the FUSILLI project for the city of Kolding, is a food system strategy. It is the very first food strategy for Kolding, and it play an instrumental role to sustain the long term commitment and anchoring within the municipallity and city council. Therefore, it has also been crucial to have it completed and approved before the end of the project.
The FUSILLI project has been a great lever to understand and address the strategic importance of the food system. The strategy has been developed based on all the learnings and in-sights conducted during the project. It has been created in close collaboration with the new Food Council, and many different stakeholders have contributed to the strategic work through out the development process.
Mapping and Developing the Strategy
As part of the foundational work we started out by mapping our current food system as well as national and local, strategies and policies related to the food system. This work has included numours of workshops with different stakeholders exploring ’needs’ and ’input’. This helped us understand our local food system and identify dependencies, gaps and opportunities. As a result we now stand with the first food strategy in Denmark, which takes a holistic approach to the food system, looking at the food system as a whole by adressing and connecting all the different areas of it.
Early November, after an initial approval from the board of directors within the municipality and two political councils, the food strategy was ready to ’meet the public’. As part of the official public and political approval process, we launched a great public hearning event, where we invited in the citizens and food system actors of Kolding. At the event we both announced the new Sustainability Policy and the Food Strategy, to emphazise their importance and mutual dependencies. Key stakeholders such as the mayor, politicians, the manager of the municipality and food council was on stage to underline their commitment and importance of the area.
Public Engagement and Future Steps
One of the key questions, we have been asking ourself for the public event, was, how to present the food strategy and vision in a relatable and engaging way, so the audience can relate to it and envision the future of our food system. The way we addressed this was to start out the ’food part’ with a visioning session, where we had an actor come and read out loud a story of our future food system in Kolding. This was followed by a social dinner, where people experienced some of the essential elements of our future food system. After ’visiting’ the future, we went back to the ’present’ and presented the more concrete and short term focus areas in the strategy.
The event was a great success! Not only was it sold out within two days, which is a great proof of the growing interest, we have been able to create for this agenda, but it also fueled the engagement which initiated many valuable inputs and responses to the food stratregy. They are all being processed now for the final submission of the food strategy to the city council.
The FUSILLI and food strategy work has already had great impact in Kolding, and maybe greatest of all, it has secured a future ’food system position’ within the sustainability Secretariat, which will be responsible for driving the sustaianble food system agenda forward and to implement the strategy. So, in Kolding we are ready to move forward and lead to way towards a more susteinable food system.
Author: Helle Vilsbøll, Kolding Municipality
Picture Credits: Asmus Kroman Brok