Artworks South Yorkshire is a non for profit creative arts organisation, inspiring and helping artists with learning disabilities, autism, or both to achieve their potential and develop important life skills through creative workshops and placements.

Artworks South Yorkshire worked with us on our third cookbook, Secret Dishes From Around the World 3. They commissioned the fantastic artist Josh Garcia to create a mixed-media artwork for the project.

Sheffield S6 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 Sheffield S6 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.

Another social enterprise confronting food poverty in Sheffield is Food Works on Richmond Park Road. Food Works depends on a system of upcycling, using unwanted ingredients and locally grown produce to cook high-quality meals for those who need them. The enterprise runs on a Pay What You Can Afford program, where a minimum of just £1 gives customers access to hot meals, cakes, pastries and coffee. Meanwhile, Food Works’ ‘Just Meals’ scheme offers an alternative to store-bought ready meals, providing customers with preprepared, microwaveable meals in compostable packaging. Food Works also runs a market in Handsworth where locals can exchange food and produce, and worked to establish community growing spaces throughout the city to promote independence from unsustainable global supply chains.

We would also like to applaud the work of Sheffield Futures, which conducts youth work throughout the city to give young people opportunities to learn important skills and discover new interests and talents. Sheffield Futures holds regular youth club sessions across the city, all of which are open access and free of charge. The enterprise also promotes outreach through detached work, as assistant youth workers approach young people in shops, parks and community centres to signpost them towards specific youth clubs, offer advice and build a greater sense of community throughout Sheffield. Recently, Sheffield Futures participated in Sheffield’s ‘Festival of Debate’ to encourage the city’s youth to participate in local affairs and make their opinions known, and offers one-on-one check-ins for young people struggling with anxiety and loneliness.

Our Community Cookery School team visited Sheffield as part of the Secret Dishes From Around the World book tour in 2021. Whilst we were there, we spoke to Dominika Rojeska about the opportunities ArtWorks South Yorkshire has provided for participants in and around the community. We also spoke to Josh Garcia, the artist commissioned by ArtWorks South Yorkshire to create the design for the Irish section of the book. You can listen to both interviews, and hear our conversations around art and autism, on our Share Your Secrets podcast, which is available for free via Spotify, Google and Apple!