The event, which took place at The Audi­to­ri­um, Sainsbury’s, Lon­don, and had the theme ​‘Feed­ing Fer­tile Minds: Engag­ing teenagers with farm­ing, food and the envi­ron­ment’, brought togeth­er a range of experts includ­ing researchers, pol­i­cy mak­ers, edu­ca­tion­al­ists, social media experts, farm­ers and youth organ­i­sa­tions. This was LEAF’s sec­ond annu­al pub­lic engage­ment con­fer­ence, and the first since LEAF merged with FACE (Farm­ing and Coun­try­side Education). 

Del­e­gates at the con­fer­ence heard how it was impor­tant to start engag­ing peo­ple with farm­ing and food pro­duc­tion as ear­ly as pos­si­ble, with LEAF Demon­stra­tion farmer, John Ren­ner telling the con­fer­ence we need to sow the seeds when chil­dren are young. For teenagers, it is vital that they are involved with shap­ing their future food sys­tems rather than being sim­ply informed, with Iris Schön­herr from The New Cit­i­zen­ship Project call­ing on the indus­try to switch from a ​‘con­sumer’ to a ​‘cit­i­zen’ mindset.

Teenagers had their own voice at the con­fer­ence, with some of those involved in Wel­come Collection’s Raw­Minds project speak­ing about the impact it had on their lives and on their views of farm­ing. They high­light­ed the need for any farm­ing ini­tia­tives work­ing with teenagers to include social media and for young peo­ple to be active­ly involved in help­ing to shape projects. The con­fer­ence also addressed the impor­tance of food as a key chan­nel to reach teenagers, with Jane Mack­ay from Youth­Sight, describ­ing food as the ​‘new rock and roll’ and how it is a fun­da­men­tal part of their iden­ti­ty and lifestyle. 

Carl Edwards, LEAF Direc­tor, Edu­ca­tion and Pub­lic Engage­ment said: ​“As the world has become increas­ing­ly dig­i­talised, young peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar are mov­ing fur­ther away from expe­ri­enc­ing and under­stand­ing the farm­ing and the nat­ur­al world. Revers­ing this gen­er­a­tional decline can offer sig­nif­i­cant social and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to every­one, not just the farm­ing indus­try. LEAF and FACE are ready to take the lead to ensure we embed knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of farm­ing, food and the envi­ron­ment into every­day life and teenagers are a key pri­or­i­ty audi­ence. What’s very clear is that we need to find out what they think of our indus­try, allow them to teach us as well and con­sult more close­ly with them. We also need to make sure that we have got cred­i­ble resources that meet demands of cur­rent edu­ca­tion­al needs – some­thing we are already address­ing through the online resource por­tal Coun­try­side Classroom.”

For a full com­men­tary from the day as well as speak­er pre­sen­ta­tions vis­it: https://leaf.eco/leaf/latestnews/events/Education_and_Public_Engagement_Conference_2017.eb