Bazooka Arts is a charity dedicated to improving health and wellbeing through participatory arts projects and arts therapies. They work with people of all ages and abilities in health, education and community settings, prioritising people most affected by inequality.

Bazooka’s therapeutic arts specialists work with a wide range of artforms, including visual art, drama, dance, movement and film to support participants in making long-term improvements to health, wellbeing and quality of life.

Bazooka worked with us on our third cookbook, Secret Dishes From Around the World 3. They worked collaboratively to create a fantastic lino-print for the project.

Glasgow South East Foodbank is an organisation seeded by the Trussell Trust that provides invaluable services to the local community. They help individuals and families in crisis, through the provision of emergency food supplies. 

We worked with Glasgow SE Foodbank during our 2021 Reverse Advent Calendar Campaign.  The project encouraged people to donate a specific item to their local food bank  every day leading up to Christmas. We created a resource hub on our website with information about food banks across the country and promoted our free donation tracker to help people support their local food bank.

Meal Makers is a community project based in Glasgow and a subsidiary of the Scottish charitable organisation Food Train. The enterprise is an intergenerational charity that connects home cooks with their older neighbours, bringing local communities closer together and ensuring that Glasgow’s elderly have a support network they can count on. Meal Makers makes it easy for Glasgow’s younger residents to sign up as cooks and share their meals with elderly residents who may lack either the money or capability to cook for themselves, helping the elderly to live independently for longer while promoting friendship and respect across generations. Since Meal Makers was established in 2014, the enterprise has seen over seven thousand local cooks sign up to help the elderly and over 75 thousand meals shared.

We would also like to applaud the work of Glasgow Eco Trust, which has planned and coordinated a number of ecological programs across the city. The enterprise began in 2002 as Dumbarton Road Corridor Environment Trust, and since then has won several awards for its work, including the Evening Times ‘Streets Ahead’ Best Environmental Initiative Award in 2013 and the Clean Up Scotland ‘Ditch The Dirt’ Hero Award just one year later. The organisation runs a ‘Community Green Team’ volunteer scheme that offers training in the environmental sector while promoting engagement in community gardening and clean-up programs, and has been instrumental in the maintenance and development of Glasgow’s green spaces. The enterprise is also known for its ‘De’ils On Wheels’ community bike workshop.

Our Community Cookery School team visited Glasgow as part of the Secret Dishes From Around the World book tour in 2021. Whilst we were there, we spoke to Bryony Murray, co-founder of Bazooka Arts, who commissioned the artwork for the Ukrainian section of the book. We then spoke to artist Gail Robinson, about the resulting piece, ‘The Sharing Table’. You can listen to both conversations on our Share Your Secrets podcast, which is available for free via Spotify, Google and Apple!