Interview with Entrepreneurs, Educators, and Kinder Kitchen Founders Julia Jeremiah and Fran Wilby
About Julia Jeremiah
My name is Julia Jeremiah. I am helping young people and adults to live a more aligned and harmonious way of life. My passion is to create spaces in which everyone can thrive and collaboratively work towards a fair, kind and loving future.
I have worked as a therapist, healer, workshop and meditation facilitator for over 15 years before moving into wellness and event management and wellness business consultancy. I am the co- founder of Lumiar, a project based learning school in Somerset and support various charities and projects working with young people whilst consulting businesses, specialising in launching new programs and events. Everything I do is based on nurturing the interconnected beauty of life, with a deep understanding that everything we feel, think and do affects the whole. I am excited to be launching Kinder Kitchen with Fran Wilby in 2021, which will be a global community tapping into one of the richest and most creative treasures of our society- young people.
About Fran Wilby
My name is Fran Wilby. I have a passion for education and co-founded Lumiar Stowford, which aims to transform education by giving children the freedom to shape their own learning journey. I also work with Lumiar Education to support schools internationally, and I work with other progressive schools in the UK. My background is in Higher and Further Education and after having my two children I became fascinated about working with children. I am also trained as a Forest School leader and feel that working outside, and with the land, animals and nature should be at heart of children’s experiences, both inside and outside school. Kinder Kitchen is a beautiful extension of my work with Julia, and I feel that it is exactly what 2021 needs!
You can find Kinder Kitchen at www.kinder-kitchen.com
The Interview
Natasha: Thank you guys so much for making time to chat to me.
Julia: Thank you for inviting us and thinking of us. Very exciting.
Natasha: Such a pleasure. I'm really excited to hear about Kinder Kitchen. Do you you want to start by just telling me a bit about that?
Julia: Kinder Kitchen was born out of an immediate response to the first knockdown where, as everybody started crazy food shopping and piling up, all of a sudden this awareness came into the broader conscious field about food chain and food supply. The vulnerable veil was so visible. All of a sudden how vulnerable we all are, and how much we rely on crazy, unsustainable food chains, became visible. As you know, we both set up Lumiar [school] so that's a really strong vision and drive too, not just as mothers, but also as people — and probably from a spiritual perspective as well — to help our children to have spaces that we feel bring the most out of them. So bringing this together, we thought what about our kids? What about our future? How about food? It all doesn't make sense anymore.
And then Kinder Kitchen was born. The children cook together from fresh surplus food. Part of the idea is that it's all donated fresh food and then they cook together. They share a meal and at the end of the session they take a box with fresh food home with them so they can continue the journey. And there's an online exchange network where they can share recipes and do a cookbook together too. And then Fran came in and it got a new dynamic. It began as a local project, but we're now setting up a tool kit to have global projects not just in this country, but potentially everywhere in the world. With our international connection to Lumiar, it's inspired by what's possible globally when you start connecting. So now we're setting up a framework in which we create a tool kit not just for children, but for local groups to come together under the Kinder Kitchen umbrella. We'll also add something that we call the mentor’s circle. Fran, do you want to explain the mentor’s circle?
Fran: So as Julia said, we kind of began with this idea of involving young people really reconnecting back to nature, to food and where food comes from, so the idea is for them to cook together. But it's not just a cooking after school club. They're there with the box of food, and the adult doesn't tell them what to do, they discuss as a circle. Circles is a recurring theme. The initial circle is with the facilitator and the chef. He says, “OK, guys, what do you want to cook? What could we make out of this?” So really, the children are learning how to make a meal out of what there is, to learn to work with seasonal goods, and so on. So the first circle is establishing young people, working together, collaborating, thinking on their feet, trying to come up with something that maybe doesn't quite work, but you can put something in. And then it grew beyond that, as Julia said, to include these kind of pop up projects nationally and internationally. We also then came up with the idea that actually this needs to be empowering the young people to understand that they have a voice, that cooking and food is political. The way they kind of interact with food chains, with shops, with corporations is political and even a small change they can make in that locale or with their families. That's the first seed of something that needs to go somewhere. It needs to become bigger. So then from Lumiar on, the work we've done is very much about students leading projects — having an idea and then taking action, being supported in taking action. So the mentor circle for Kinder Kitchen will involve experts nationally and internationally that will be from all different walks of life. They may be entrepreneurs. They may work on sustainability and climate change. But really, it's the older students and young people from the individual Kinder Kitchens will be invited to graduate up into the mentor’s circle with the adults and will then support the younger children as they have ideas. So, for example, they might want to work within the local community. The idea is they take that plan or that pitch, if you like, to the mentor’s circle and the adults and the older young people will advise and will then connect them with other people that may be able to help them get that project started. So it's very much born out of this idea that things start small. But actually what we want is to empower the young people to understand is that you can then take action in the world with your local community guided by this group of supportive adults, friends and experts who are there to help you. So it's kind of blossomed to be something much bigger now, which is great.
Natasha: I love the scaffolding of that experience for the children. I think that's beautiful and so clear. And you've answered all my questions in your amazing vision — you’ve hit all the big points! I don't know what to ask you now. [laughs]
Julia: Natasha, it came also through listening to quite a few podcasts from Tom Rivett-Carnac [Outrage & Optimism]. And also I'm really intently listening to Charles Eisenstein and some other people that have different thoughts on the climate crisis and what it's all about. But for us, it's almost not about the climate crisis, but about a more, let's say, spiritual question like, why are we in this situation? And from where we are now, we feel that it's the wound of separation that we're all trying to heal at the moment. The only way we’re going to counterbalance the separation is connection and to strengthen those connections. And I have to say, I know Fran has this too, this intrinsic belief that when you really connect into nature and you understand that you're an intrinsic part of this interconnected beauty of all life, then it's impossible to do harm to the earth.
But if we don't feel that we are part of life, then it's like a linear approach to problems — problems, solution, problem, solution — that the circle and the interconnectedness is kind of missing if we don't embody it. So we feel it's a really powerful, and privileged, place to be with the children, because, again, spiritually we feel that our children have such a strong creative force that runs through them.
Natasha: I remember in the first lockdown that fragility was crystal clear. It was no longer intellectual. I remember feeling a real well of gratitude for having a garden and thinking about the friends and family I knew who didn't have a garden and what they were facing, how disempowering that would feel.
Julia: And having a garden is one thing, but if you're in a state of survival, you haven’t got the resources to be creative and to come up with something, and this is something that we're working hard on. We’re talking to colleagues in finance to work out a way that Kinder Kitchen can be free and accessible to everyone. We do not want to create another system that is privileged or just accessible for a few people amongst us.
Natasha: One of the things I wanted to talk to you about, actually, is generational thinking. I feel like, you know, like we've completely lost the sense of thinking generationally. It's just, like you said, sort of problem, solution, problem, solution. It's so much in this small container. I'd be interested to hear more about how you create a way of thinking that’s more expansive. It sounds like maybe one of your solutions is quite a practical one, making it free. Have you got any other strategies for thinking generationally?
Fran: So the mentor’s circle is a key part. Young people go to school and see their one teacher in school. And so actually the generations are quite isolated. And we wanted to put together this space where the young people are listened to firstly and secondly, that they're supported in the way that they need to be. Members of the circle would advise them on their pitch, connect them with someone that can help them connect with someone that may be able to invest, and so on. So hopefully it becomes mutually supportive, like the generations used to work — the wisdom of the elders if you like. I love the concept of the seven generations and I think food is central to remembering. So as Julia said, part of the Kinder Kitchen idea is to have a cookbook. We'll ask the young people if they want to be part of this, but we're hoping that in each week there might be somebody who would like to be a photographer, somebody else that might like to storyboard it, for example. So over the year, they would take photographs of the recipes. And a lot of those recipes we're hoping will be kind of generational sharing of knowledge, and understanding from many different parts of the world, so young people understand that food is the thing that connects us, how we produce it, how we use it. Most recipes I love are kind of almost maps of family memories as well.
Natasha: That’s lovely. Another memory I have of lockdown is sitting down to have longish meals. I wasn't sitting in front of the computer anymore trying to finish my work before school pick up. I was more conscious and eating more fresh foods. Sharing that connection to food with young people feels very resonant at the moment.
Julia: There are two extremes at the moment, and there's also a lot of grey space. One is for the people that are privileged enough to go really fast and then having a wake up call and having the privilege to be safe enough to slow down. And then we have the other end where it's a rat race. It's never enough. And the slowdown potentially means not being able to feed your children anymore. And I'm hoping, and this is obviously a bit of an experiment, that we will somehow manage to to help both worlds. Because I personally feel moved when I see for example the last half-term response when so many people cooked and gave free meals for families who can't afford a lunch for their children. We take it totally for granted! The great thing is it's a wake up call. You can't look the other way anymore. But I'd like Kinder Kitchen to have a place in that story and actively contribute to it.
Natasha: I’m glad you brought that up, because there are so many people for whom that wasn't part of lockdown. We’ve also began rightly noticing disparities, that are built into these systems. It’s great that you've had this response to it because I think some people felt really despairing of that. Could you share some more plans for Kinder Kitchen?
Julia: We are assuming that when the projects grow, that they naturally invite all of their families one day to come and eat all together. For example, they might have a stall at a Christmas market. This is where the mentor’s circle comes in to help them work on projects that are beyond the basic structures. But the connection really is in diverse young people connecting to each other over food — food and nature. It’s the glue basically that brings it all together.
Natasha: Lovely. Oh, that feels like a really nice note to end on. Thanks for being here!
Julia and Fran: Thanks!
