In Sunderland...

In Sunderland...

Wearmouth Bridge in Sunderland photographed on a cloudy day.

our Partners include

Family Arts Campaign logo which features two eyes.

Sunderland Family Arts Network

The Sunderland food bank logo written in two shades of green and the location name in blue.

Sunderland Foodbank

The Hospitality and Hope logo written in green and orange font.

South Tyneside Foodbank

The text My Sisters' Kitchen which is their logo

My Sisters' Kitchen

Family Arts Network Sunderland is a collaborative project involving arts and culture organisations across the city, alongside non arts organisations that work with families. They come together as a Network to promote family friendly arts activity and spaces for families in Sunderland, making it a great place for families to have fun and feel safe. They also work closely with the organisation More than Grandparents which is run by and for kinship carers and their families.

The aim is to increase the involvement of local families in creative activities, from craft to music to performing arts, and make the experience of going to a family event in Sunderland a fantastic one!

Family Arts Network Sunderland worked with us on our third cookbook, Secret Dishes From Around the World 3. They commissioned the artist Hannah Rich to work alongside a group of talented creatives aged from 18 months to 11 years old  to create a mixed-media artwork for the project.

Find out more
A Family Arts Network event with children and their families sat together in a blue tent.
The Bounceback Food Reverse Advent Calendar with all the doors open showing which products to donate.

Sunderland Foodbank and South Tyneside Foodbank are organisations seeded by the Trussell Trust that provide invaluable services to the local community. They help individuals and families in crisis, through the provision of emergency food supplies. 

We worked with Sunderland Foodbank and South Tyneside 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.

Check out the Campaign

The mission of My Sisters’ Kitchen is to provide training, employment and sense of belonging to some of the most disadvantaged women in Sunderland. They work alongside women who live with ‘multiple disadvantage’ – women experiencing domestic abuse who are more than likely experiencing other forms of social and economic disadvantage such as poverty, unemployment, crime and poor mental health.

As one of our Partner VCSE organisations, My Sister’s Kitchen are able to offer the women they support free places on our cookery workshops, cookalongs and national learning programmes. They are also able to provide their beneficiaries with free access to the recipes & resources on our Cooking & Nutrition Portal – helping them to build towards a positive future.

Learn more
Young people taking part in a Bounceback Food cookery workshop with bowls of fresh food on a preparation table.
A Bounceback Food chef batch cooking on a catering project

We also admire the work of Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen – a local, independently-run kitchen supplying free food for the hungry without need for referral. The kitchen prioritises home-style cooking, preparing healthy takeaway meals and regularly adjusting its menu, from curries and frittatas to jacket potatoes and apple crumble. The kitchen also runs a warehouse, where customers can donate and exchange tinned goods, and has established ties with the city council and local supermarkets to ensure that surplus food is given to those who need it instead of thrown away. To encourage healthy eating and self-sufficiency, the kitchen owns an allotment plot complete with a recently built greenhouse to grow fresh, home-grown produce, and regularly takes donations from local allotmenteers to incorporate into their recipes.

Find out more

We would also like to draw attention to the work of Sunderland’s Wearside Women in Need, which has coordinated accessible community services for women and children suffering from abuse for almost forty years. Between 2020 and 2021, Wearside Women in Need received over 2,700 referrals and accommodated as many as 72 women and 62 children, giving refuge to women and children living in abusive households. The organisation conducts outreach from its offices in the city centre, where Independent Domestic Violence Advocates offer one-on-one support to women dealing with domestic abuse, online abuse and cyber-stalking. Wearside Women in Need also operates a helpline, which received over 1,300 enquiries between 2021 and 2022, and offers a counselling service run by professional counsellors qualified to work on issues such as depression, bereavement, abuse and anxiety.

Learn more
A Bounceback Food volunteer working on their laptop in a coffee shop.
A brightly coloured flower made of 20 petal pieces of art with the text Share Your Secrets within

Our Community Cookery School team visited Sunderland as part of the Secret Dishes From Around the World book tour in 2021. Whilst we were there, we spoke to Karen Gray and Karen Davidson from More Than Grandparents, an organisation that work closely with Family Arts Network Sunderland. The Family Arts Network commissioned artist Hannah Rich to create a vibrant design for the Malaysian section of the cookbook. You can listen to these conversations on our Share Your Secrets podcast, which is available for free via Spotify, Google and Apple!

Listen now

Our Community Cookery School teams host a wide range of fundraising and community events throughout the year. These include our popular Secret Supper Clubs, Secret Dishes From Around the World cookery workshops and seasonal Community Kitchen get-togethers. There’s something for everyone! Find out more about all of our upcoming public events on our Eventbrite page…

Browse events
Help Us Grow!

We’re currently looking for volunteers in Sunderland to join the Bounceback Team and support people living in food poverty. Head over to our volunteering page for more information!

Make a Difference
Help Provide Meals & Cooking Classes this Winter

Help our Community Cookery School team provide 5,000 additional meals and cookery classes in warm hubs this winter!