A much-needed catch up with Cherry Truluck who founded and runs Custom Food Lab…

Research Focus

One idea has been to hone in on a particular Intergenerational Growing Project involving a local care home and school, and study the wellbeing impact on participants. Complications due to coronavirus restrictions aside, we agree there’s “already a lot of info on the benefits of outdoors and growing stuff”. So it’s more exciting to focus the research on the journey of Custom in “creatively intervening in food systems”, from the perspective of:

• me as the Researcher, because I feel I spend so much time in the care home world already, so instead this will build nicely upon my MSc thesis in a different direction, and opens up a whole new world (food security) to learn about
• Custom, as part of their mission is to create a blueprint for future communities, and taking part in formal research (evidence gathering) will increase project validity, and also possibly chances for funding
• filling a gap in the literature, in terms of longitudinal studies of ‘hybrid orgs’, ‘radical care’, community development, and food security

The challenge will be that I need to be ‘in the heart of Custom’ in order to fully study its journey… I have a full time job, and the org includes several key actors delivering an ever-expanding number of community projects. Plus, I need to be fairly hands-on with the work myself, if this becomes a ProfDoc or Knowledge Transfer Partnership, as opposed to a regular PhD.

Cherry and I both want ‘wellbeing’ to feature still, but agree this will undoubtedly be included by default of Custom being a ‘caring institution,’ hoping to catalyse ‘radical forms of care’

Current challenges:

• Trying to get the whole thing moving is tough in the throws of C-19, and when everyone involved is working very part time: “I’’m aware i’m micro managing just now but… it kind of has to be that way”
• How best to keep the information flowing between us all (Cherry: “You can really feel comfortable bullying us about [what’s going on] to ensure you’re kept up to speed”)
• Exploring organisational structure, eg trustees, directors, etc: “we’re learning just as quickly how important it is to have those things, alongside being aware of how incredibly hierarchical and patriarchal those structures are…”

Possible sub-question for the research: How does the organisation balance its social, environmental and commercial objectives?

Cherry: “Framing is important. Dividing social and environmental objectives into two is in itself a problem. Even ‘Social impact’ implies a bit of colonialism, as if we are going to ‘swoop in and save the poor’! But perhaps we can embed in the question an understanding that the question itself is faulty, but we have to word it a certain way because of the system we sit within.. i.e. know those objectives won’t balance, they never do, because they sit within an economic framework that won’t allow them to”

Alise: “‘Commercial objectives’ include sources of funding, or the fact that all key actors have other jobs to enable them the time to work at Custom… If these are not met, then an org cannot survive..?

Cherry: “We have acknowledged from the off that we (Custom) may not survive – ultimately ‘lots of little’ may emerge instead – if that’s what gets the ‘job done’. We haven’t set out to ‘survive’ – we fully appreciate we may burn out in the process of maximising impact.

What does ‘job done’ mean?

Cherry: “Food Security. We want to change the world, but not in the sense of charity; in the sense that the world is burning! Taking down capitalism is necessary to get the job done, but we can’t do that on our own. We’re hoping that there’s lots of other people doing it everywhere else. The things we know about are the interconnectedness of food systems, creatively imagining systems and structures that make the world go round. This is where our skills are. And food is at the centre of all life. We don’t exactly have a ‘this is where we want to be in 5 years time.’ We simply have some things we would have liked to have done by then. We certainly do intend to not burn out – but then the answer may be that someone else has taken it over. There’s no doubt that I will still be making this kind of work in 10 years time: I will never not be making work about food, or involved in socially engaged work. Mary will never not be growing food, and so on. All the individual people involved will continue to do the things that they do. But it may be that by the end of this process you’re not looking at Custom any more but several different organisations because that’s the way we achieve what we want. The org is just a name that we’re obliged to create to pay taxes and it makes for easier communication. We’ll take whatever form we need to do the work we need to do. I think that’s a pretty common approach for collectives.
We do have a strategy of having made that smaller geographical impact viable in folkestone, that Custom could then act as a Consultancy and impact on policy-making at more national / governmental level, way down the line….

Creative Thinking = Critical Thinking

Cherry: “It’s impossible talking about Custom without thinking about it as run by artists – it’s important because it completely shifts the perspective that everyone’s taking on things.
Perhaps ‘creative thinking’ could be better thought of as ‘critical thinking’. We’re not trying to be different for the sake of being different. 
As much as we’re questioning all those patriarchal structures, etc, we’re also finding them really useful, so we’ll stick to them as long as we need to. We’re not just trying to be rebels. It’s just that clearly the big and small systems don’t work, so we’re trying to find our way through. You have to question everything, even if that means keeping some things the same in the end….