Manchester Climate Monthly asked several different groups about the challenges and lessons of 2012 and the goals for 2013. We published a small portion of the answers in the centre-spread of the January issue (which you can see here). Over the coming weeks we will publish the full answers provided by different groups…  Here are Kindling Trust‘s answers.

1) What were the big successes of 2012?
For us the greatest success of 2012 was to grow to a team of nine people who work on projects that really compliment each other. Our fortnightly team meetings are exciting, challenging and practically focused on inter-related challenges and immediate opportunities.

The projects we are now working on are all driven by the need for a sustainable food system for Greater Manchester and we have learnt that the complex and inter-related challenges facing farmers, independent food business and NGOs dealing with food poverty are not going to be solved overnight or within the existing food system.

2) What were the big lessons learnt?
We’ve learnt many lessons about how we work, who we work with and what we work on. There are so many opportunities in our city and many distractions too and we continue to refine exactly what it is we are focused on.

One of the areas we are learning most is in the area of how we move from being a small tight-knit group to an organisation which engages a large number of people with a shared vision.

3) What we can expect from your organisation in 2013?
We have a great feeling about 2013! We started the year giving a presentation at the renowned Oxford Real Farming Conference and this weekend the nine strong team are off
to the Middlewood Ecology Study Centre for a strategy weekend to look at what’s in store for Kindling over the next few years.

We will continue to develop our existing projects in 2013, for example we start a new Commercial Organic Veg Growing course on the 16th February, we are co-ordinating
Greater Manchester’s involvement in the Big Dig National Event on 16th March and we have the 12th FeedingManchester planned for 23rd March in Bolton.

We are also starting a number of new exciting sustainable food projects later on in the year. For example we are at the advanced planning stages of working with a prison to
grow food as part of Manchester Veg People and looking to establish a FarmStart initiative – providing supported growing space for new commercial growers.

4) How will you know that 2013 has been a success and the lessons of 2012 have been implemented?
We will know if 2013 has been a success if the projects we are involved with are still flourishing and we have met a number of key targets. For example we aim to bring eight
new farmers into Manchester Veg People in 2013 and engage a thousand people in Community Gardens across Greater Manchester.

We hope the lessons learnt from 2012 are heeded in 2013 and this is partly why we have an annual strategy weekend to review our progress.

Thanks to Chris Walsh for these answers. Kindling recently put up a blog post about their strategy weekend.