Food for Life Partnership Evaluation

Lead Researchers: Dr Adrian Morley, Professor Kevin Morgan

The Food for Life Partnership was a five-year Lottery-funded initiative that aimed to transform food culture in schools and communities across England. Led by the Soil Association in partnership with the Focus on Food Campaign, Garden Organic and the Health Education Trust. Brass was part of the official strategic evaluation of the programme along with researchers at the University of the West of England.

The team evaluated the Food for Life Partnership programme against three ‘outcome commitments’ to the Lottery, as well as a set of wider programme objectives. This involved a continuous engagement in programme evaluation over the five years of the programme, with biannual reports to the Food for Life Partnership management group.

The overall aims of this work were to evaluate the impact of the programme on participating schools and their communities. The two main roles this evaluation were:
1. Interpretation and quality control of programme-wide data. This data is being collated by programme delivery staff, and by participating schools, and recorded on the bespoke FFLP database & audit log.
2. Data collection & interpretation through more in-depth case study enquiries, both thematic and flagship community-specific.

Researchers from Brass focused on the food sourcing and the school kitchen environment aspects of the programme as well as contributing to the overall development of the evaluation programme.

Highlighted Outputs
Reports
Orme J, Jones M, Kimberlee R, Weitkemp E, Salmon  D, Dailami N, Morley A & Morgan K (2011) Food for Life Partnership Evaluation: Full report. Research Report for the Food for Life Partnership. University of the West of England, Bristol / Brass, Cardiff University.
Orme J, Jones M, Kimberlee R, Weitkemp E, Salmon  D, Dailami N, Morley A & Morgan K (2011) Food for Life Partnership Evaluation: Summary report. Research Report for the Food for Life Partnership. University of the West of England, Bristol / Brass, Cardiff University.
Morley A (2011) Food for Life Partnership Evaluation: Food Sourcing Case Study. Research Report for the Food for Life Partnership. University of the West of England, Bristol / Brass, Cardiff University.
Morgan K and Morley A (2011) Researching the Public Plate. Paper presented at the Brass Conference ‘Researching Food Sustainability; reflections, challenges and the future agenda’, Cardiff.