Restorative Cooking in Hartcliffe

On 16th and 23rd March, LinkAge held cooking workshops in partnership with No.10 The People’s Kitchen and Merchants Academy, as part of our Restorative Justice Programme. 

LinkAge’s Restorative project aims to bring younger people who are at risk of recieveing, or who have received Acceptable Behaviour Contracts together with local older people. 

Seven students and five older people took part in two cooking sessions in Hartcliffe, pairing up to cook the components for two of the courses, for each of the sessions. 

On 16th March, the groups worked together to cook spaghetti Bolognese and garlic bread, followed by rice pudding and on the 23rd March, the group cooked pizza and fruit crumble. The pairs worked together at different stations to prepare and cook components for each of the recipes and then sat down together at the end of the session, to enjoy the food that they had created.

Both sessions were hugely successful with the students sharing their aspirations of what they hope to do when they leave school and the older people asking about the students day to day school life. Comparisons were made on how things have changed and it was clear to see that any barriers that the groups had prior to the session, were broken by the end.  

If you’d like to find out more about LinkAge’s Restorative Programme and sessions that are running your local area, then please click here