Jodie Armour of Cassiltoun Housing Association in Glasgow tells us how their 'Castlemilk Cooks Up Memories' project benefitted from a Creative Lives 'Together Again' microgrant. 

"The Creative Lives microgrant enabled a group of volunteers to bring community members together through food.

Castlemilk Cooks Up Memories started off as a Facebook group during lockdown where people could share recipes, memories, budgeting tips and cooking tips. However, the volunteer who started the page wanted to bring people together in person to do this and allow people to take a branded tote bag home filled with recipe packs and information. 

The stencil for the tote bag was created by the volunteer and sent away to be printed. The volunteer then invited other volunteers to come in and help paint the tote bags for the Community Meal day, and then a separate group of volunteers was involved to attend the community meal day to help at the event (giving out the bags, serving the taster food etc.)

The first community meal day was in March 2022 and another in June 2022. Roughly 50 people attended each event, tasted some of the food, chatted with each other, shared recipes, cooking hints and tips and took away a tote bag filled with ingredients and recipes to try at home.

The tote bags were a great promotional tool for the group and also a great souvenir as people can use them for their own shopping now instead of buying bags every time they shop.

The Community Meal day and the tote bags have increased membership of the group and they have since applied for more funding to continue the community meals bringing people together and increasing health and wellbeing in the community."