Rhyl Kitchen Classroom C.I.C.

Rhyl Kitchen Classroom C.I.C. is located in the grounds of a primary school in North London. Activities during 2025 included:  Hosting and delivering food education lessons for the pupils of the school – approximately 15 hours per week during term time. These sessions teach the children how to cook and how food is grown and educate them around issues around nutrition and healthy eating.  Providing the facilities of a teaching kitchen to other schools who do not have the same resource on their site. For example, we hosted pupils of Netley Primary School who sent a class and their teachers to deliver sessions.  Hosting and delivering a range of programmes for the parents of pupils of the school. This included Dinner Club, which is a two-month programme training parents how to cook in a commercial setting with a view to empowering them to set up their own businesses in future. The participants report an increase in confidence, social skills and understanding of issues relating to professional catering such as food safety.  Providing free and subsidised healthy meals for a wide range of people / groups in the local community. These include families experiencing financial hardship and food poverty and families from the wider community identified through the school’s community programmes and charities such as Home Start.  Providing healthy and low-costs meals during our Wednesday evening pop-ups at the wood-fired oven.  Providing support in terms of advice and free or subsidised kitchen use to members of the local community who need a venue to develop and deliver their own food education programmes. Examples include: the ‘Cooking with Love’ programme’ which offered free family cooking classes; and ‘Chat and Learn’ which is a broader programme involving nutrition, exercise and personal development classes.  Providing facilities for local charities to provide food education programmes during school holidays. This includes HVH ARTS, who recruited young people from the local area for cookery and food growing sessions and Stripey Spanish who run sessions to learn Spanish through hands-on cookery.  Providing facilities for professional caterers who need a fully equipped kitchen for producing meals, such as Holy Sugar bakery.