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The will to live life differently can start

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in some of the most unusual places.

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This is where I come from, Todmorden.

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It's a market town in the north of England,

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15,000 people, between Leeds and Manchester,

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fairly normal market town.

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It used to look like this,

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and now it's more like this,

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with fruit and veg and herbs sprouting up all over the place.

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We call it propaganda gardening. (Laughter)

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Corner row railway, station car park,

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front of a health center, people's front gardens,

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and even in front of the police station. (Laughter)

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We've got edible canal towpaths,

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and we've got sprouting cemeteries.

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The soil is extremely good. (Laughter)

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We've even invented a new form of tourism.

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It's called vegetable tourism, and believe it or not,

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people come from all over the world to poke around in our raised beds,

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even when there's not much growing. (Laughter)

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But it starts a conversation. (Laughter)

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And, you know, we're not doing it because we're bored. (Laughter)

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We're doing it because we want to start a revolution.

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We tried to answer this simple question:

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Can you find a unifying language that cuts across age

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and income and culture that will help people themselves

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find a new way of living,

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see spaces around them differently,

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think about the resources they use differently,

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interact differently?

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Can we find that language?

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And then, can we replicate those actions?

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And the answer would appear to be yes,

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and the language would appear to be food.

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So, three and a half years ago, a few of us

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sat around a kitchen table and

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we just invented the whole thing. (Laughter)

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(Applause)

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We came up with a really simple game plan that we put to a public meeting.

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We did not consult. We did not write a report.

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Enough of all that. (Laughter)

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And we said to that public meeting in Todmorden,

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look, let's imagine that our town

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is focused around three plates:

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a community plate, the way we live our everyday lives;

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a learning plate, what we teach our kids in school

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and what new skills we share amongst ourselves;

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and business, what we do with the pound in our pocket

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and which businesses we choose to support.

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Now, let's imagine those plates agitated

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with community actions around food.

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If we start one of those community plates spinning,

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that's really great, that really starts to empower people,

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but if we can then spin that community plate

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with the learning plate, and then spin it with the business plate,

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we've got a real show there, we've got some action theater.

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We're starting to build resilience ourselves.

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We're starting to reinvent community ourselves,

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and we've done it all without a flipping strategy document.

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(Applause)

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And here's the thing as well.

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We've not asked anybody's permission to do this,

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we're just doing it. (Laughter)

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And we are certainly not waiting for that check

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to drop through the letterbox before we start,

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and most importantly of all, we are not daunted

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by the sophisticated arguments that say,

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"These small actions are meaningless in the face of tomorrow's problems,"

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because I have seen the power of small actions,

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and it is awesome.

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So, back to the public meeting. (Laughter)

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We put that proposition to the meeting, two seconds,

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and then the room exploded.

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I have never, ever experienced anything like that in my life.

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And it's been the same in every single room, in every town

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that we've ever told our story.

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People are ready and respond to the story of food.

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They want positive actions they can engage in,

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and in their bones, they know it's time

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to take personal responsibility

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and invest in more kindness to each other

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and to the environment.

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And since we had that meeting three and a half years ago,

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it's been a heck of a roller coaster.

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We started with a seed swap, really simple stuff,

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and then we took an area of land, a strip on the side

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of our main road, which was a dog toilet, basically,

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and we turned it into a really lovely herb garden.

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We took the corner of the car park in the station

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that you saw, and we made vegetable beds

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for everybody to share and pick from themselves.

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We went to the doctors. We've just had

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a 6-million-pound health center built in Todmorden,

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and for some reason that I cannot comprehend,

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it has been surrounded by prickly plants. (Laughter)

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So we went to the doctors, said, "Would you mind us taking them up?"

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They said, "Absolutely fine, provided you get planning permission

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and you do it in Latin and you do it in triplicate,"

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so we did — (Laughter) — and now there are fruit trees

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and bushes and herbs and vegetables

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around that doctor's surgery.

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And there's been lots of other examples, like the corn

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that was in front of the police station,

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and the old people's home that we've planted it with food

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that they can pick and grow.

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But it isn't just about growing,

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because we all are part of this jigsaw.

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It's about taking those artistic people in your community

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and doing some fabulous designs in those raised beds

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to explain to people what's growing there,

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because there's so many people that don't really recognize

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a vegetable unless it's in a bit of plastic

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with a bit of an instruction packet on the top. (Laughter)

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So we have some people who designed these things,

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"If it looks like this, please don't pick it, but if it looks like this,

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help yourself."

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This is about sharing and investing in kindness.

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And for those people that don't want to do either

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of those things, maybe they can cook,

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so we pick them seasonally and then we go on the street,

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or in the pub, or in the church,

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or wherever people are living their lives.

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This is about us going to the people and saying,

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"We are all part of the local food jigsaw,

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we are all part of a solution."

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And then, because we know we've got vegetable tourists

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and we love them to bits and they're absolutely fantastic,

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we thought, what could we do to give them an even better experience?

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So we invented, without asking, of course,

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the Incredible Edible Green Route.

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And this is a route of exhibition gardens,

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and edible towpaths, and bee-friendly sites, and the story

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of pollinators, and it's a route that we designed

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that takes people through the whole of our town,

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past our cafes and our small shops, through our market,

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not just to and fro from the supermarket,

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and we're hoping that, in changing people's footfall

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around our town, we're also changing their behavior.

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And then there's the second plate, the learning plate.

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Well, we're in partnership with a high school.

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We've created a company. We are designing and building

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an aquaponics unit in some land that was spare

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at the back of the high school, like you do,

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and now we're going to be growing fish and vegetables

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in an orchard with bees,

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and the kids are helping us build that,

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and the kids are on the board, and because the community

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was really keen on working with the high school,

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the high school is now teaching agriculture,

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and because it's teaching agriculture, we started to think,

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how could we then get those kids that never had a qualification

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before in their lives but are really excited about growing,

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how can we give them some more experience?

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So we got some land that was donated

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by a local garden center.

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It was really quite muddy, but in a truly incredible way,

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totally voluntary-led, we have turned that

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into a market garden training center,

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and that is polytunnels and raised beds

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and all the things you need to get the soil under your fingers

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and think maybe there's a job in this for me in the future.

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And because we were doing that, some local academics said,

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"You know, we could help design

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a commercial horticulture course for you.

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There's not one that we know of."

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So they're doing that, and we're going to launch it later this year,

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and it's all an experiment, and it's all voluntary.

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And then there's the third plate,

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because if you walk through an edible landscape,

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and if you're learning new skills, and if you start to get

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interested in what's growing seasonally,

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you might just want to spend more of your own money

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in support of local producers,

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not just veg, but meat and cheese and beer

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and whatever else it might be.

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But then, we're just a community group, you know.

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We're just all volunteers. What could we actually do?

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So we did some really simple things.

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We fundraised, we got some blackboards,

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we put "Incredible Edible" on the top,

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we gave it every market trader that was selling locally,

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and they scribbled on what they were selling in any one week.

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Really popular. People congregated around it.

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Sales were up.

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And then, we had a chat with the farmers, and we said,

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"We're really serious about this,"

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but they didn't actually believe us, so we thought,

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okay, what should we do? I know. If we can create

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a campaign around one product and show them

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there is local loyalty to that product,

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maybe they'll change their mind and see we're serious.

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So we launched a campaign -- because it just amuses me --

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called Every Egg Matters. (Laughter)

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And what we did was we put people on our egg map.

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It's a stylized map of Togmorden.

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Anybody that's selling their excess eggs

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at the garden gate, perfectly legally, to their neighbors,

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we've stuck on there. We started with four,

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and we've now got 64 on, and the result of that was

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that people were then going into shops

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asking for a local Todmorden egg, and the result of that

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was, some farmers upped the amount of flocks they got

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of free range birds, and then they went on to meat birds,

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and although these are really, really small steps,

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that increasing local economic confidence

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is starting to play out in a number of ways,

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and we now have farmers doing cheese

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and they've upped their flocks and rare breed pigs,

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they're doing pasties and pies and things

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that they would have never done before.

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We've got increasing market stalls selling local food,

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and in a survey that local students did for us, 49 percent

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of all food traders in that town said that their bottom line

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had increased because of what we were actually doing.

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And we're just volunteers and it's only an experiment.

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(Laughter)

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Now, none of this is rocket science.

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It certainly is not clever, and it's not original.

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But it is joined up, and it is inclusive.

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This is not a movement for those people

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that are going to sort themselves out anyway.

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This is a movement for everyone.

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We have a motto: If you eat, you're in. (Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Across age, across income, across culture.

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It's been really quite a roller coaster experience,

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but going back to that first question that we asked,

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is it replicable? Yeah. It most certainly is replicable.

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More than 30 towns in England now are spinning

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the Incredible Edible plate.

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Whichever way they want to do it, of their own volition,

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they're trying to make their own lives differently,

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and worldwide, we've got communities across America

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and Japan -- it's incredible, isn't it? I mean,

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America and Japan and New Zealand.

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People after the earthquake in New Zealand visited us

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in order to incorporate some of this public spiritedness

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around local growing into the heart of Christchurch.

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And none of this takes more money

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and none of this demands a bureaucracy,

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but it does demand that you think things differently

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and you are prepared to bend budgets and work programs

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in order to create that supportive framework

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that communities can bounce off.

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And there's some great ideas already in our patch.

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Our local authority has decided to make everywhere

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Incredible Edible, and in support of that

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have decided to do two things.

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First, they're going to create an asset register of spare land

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that they've got, put it in a food bank so that communities

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can use that wherever they live,

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and they're going to underpin that with a license.

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And then they've said to every single one of their workforce,

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if you can, help those communities grow,

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and help them to maintain their spaces.

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Suddenly, we're seeing actions on the ground

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from local government. We're seeing this mainstreamed.

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We are responding creatively at last to what Rio demanded

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of us, and there's lots more you could do.

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I mean, just to list a few. One, please stop putting

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prickly plants around public buildings. It's a waste of space.

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(Laughter) Secondly, please create -- please, please create

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edible landscapes so that our children start to walk

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past their food day in, day out, on our high streets,

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in our parks, wherever that might be.

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Inspire local planners to put the food sites at the heart

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of the town and the city plan, not relegate them

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to the edges of the settlements that nobody can see.

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Encourage all our schools to take this seriously.

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This isn't a second class exercise.

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If we want to inspire the farmers of tomorrow,

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then please let us say to every school,

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create a sense of purpose around the importance

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to the environment, local food and soils.

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Put that at the heart of your school culture,

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and you will create a different generation.

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There are so many things you can do, but ultimately

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this is about something really simple.

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Through an organic process, through

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an increasing recognition of the power of small actions,

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we are starting, at last, to believe in ourselves again,

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and to believe in our capacity, each and every one of us,

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to build a different and a kinder future,

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and in my book, that's incredible.

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Thank you. (Applause)

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(Applause)

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Thank you very much. (Applause)