Food for Thought – The talk series about what we eat
Doors open from 6.30pm, talks will run 7pm-8pm.
The Food Museum and EA Sustain present our third series of Food for Thought in conjunction with the ‘School Dinners‘ exhibition, discussing the history, evolution and experience of school food. Hear from food-historians, dinner ladies and campaigners as they delve into school dinners, why they are the way they are and how we have arrived at the current offer children are eating in schools today. The events will be moderated by Joanne Ooi, founder and director of EA Sustain Festival.
£12 – talk
Food for Thought Talks
Pen Vogler: School Dinners – the Hidden Agenda
Thursday 12 February
Cat-meat roll; sponge with pink custard. Fish fingers, frogspawn pudding with jam. Most of us have strong feelings about our school dinners, past and present. But did we ever stop to think, what are they for? For over a century, all kinds of people have had their say about why we should be feeding kids at school. To feed the soldiers of the future; to help our farmers; to be charitable; to be just; to stop wasting money on trying to educate kids who were too hungry to learn. Can the arguments around school dinners in the past help us do the right thing today?
Using the Food Museum’s School Dinners exhibition as a point of departure, Pen Vogler – author of Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain and Stuffed: A Political History of What We Eat and Why It Matters – examines how school meals illuminate the long history of food, class and social policy in Britain.
About Pen Vogler
Pen Vogler is a food historian and bestselling author whose books – including Dinner with Mr Darcy, Scoff, and Stuffed – explore the politics, class dynamics, and cultural meaning of what and how we eat. She has curated food history events for the Oxford Literary Festival and contributed to The Guardian, The Observer and BBC Radio. Her work examines sociocultural history through the lens of food.
Jeanette Orrey: Food for Life
Thursday 23 April
What children eat in school has always reflected wider questions about health, class, farming and the way we feed the nation. Building on the Food Museum’s School Dinners exhibition, this talk with Jeanette Orrey MBE explores how school meals can become a powerful catalyst for change – improving children’s nutrition while supporting healthier farming and localised procurement, all while helping young people understand the full journey of food from soil to plate. Drawing on her pioneering work with the Food for Life programme, Orrey considers how schools can shape healthier habits and influence the future of our food system.
About Jeanette Orrey
Jeanette Orrey MBE is a pioneering school food reformer and co-founder of Food for Life. Formerly a school dinner lady, she transformed the menus at St Peter’s Primary in Nottinghamshire, proving that fresh, local, cooked-from-scratch school meals are achievable and affordable. Her campaigning has reshaped national policy on children’s food, and her book The Dinner Lady remains a touchstone for healthier school-meal advocacy across the UK.
The Food Foundation: Changing Food, Changing Lives
Thursday 25 June
The Food Foundation has become one of the UK’s most influential voices on children’s nutrition, food insecurity and the affordability of healthy diets. In this talk, a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team will discuss the organisation’s evidence-based approach to driving policy change – from monitoring the cost of the national food basket to advocating for fairer food systems. Central to the conversation is the Foundation’s landmark collaboration with Marcus Rashford, which transformed public support for expanding free school meals and triggered national attention on child hunger. We will examine how strategic campaigning can influence government action and what must happen next to secure long-term, systemic change.
Also in the Food for Thought series:
The Watermill Lunch: A Breaducation – David Wright & Ben Mackinnon
Sunday 31 May
During this lunch hour talk, join a panel of bread experts including David Wright, baker and author of Breaking Bread, and Ben Mackinnon, farmer and founder of pioneering bakery-cafe, E5 Bakehouse, will examine the full story of bread, its history and evolution, and how this single foodstuff – the fulcrum of the arable farming industry – can play a pivotal role in restoring health to both human beings and Mother Earth.
The talk will be followed by a bread-themed lunch. This event is part of the Food Museum’s Bread Week and The Real Bread Campaign.
About David Wright
David Wright is a baker, food activist, and author of Breaking Bread, a manifesto for reclaiming real, nutritious bread in British diets. Based at The Black Bull in Sedbergh, he champions regenerative grains, traditional milling, and community-focused baking. Through teaching, campaigning, and hands-on practice, Wright argues that good bread is both a health imperative and a cultural inheritance worth protecting—and that transforming our loaves can transform our food system.
About Benjamin Mackinnon
Ben Mackinnon is a regenerative farmer at Fellows Farm in Suffolk and the founder of London’s acclaimed E5 Bakehouse. A leading voice in the movement for better grain and better bread, Mackinnon focuses on agroecological farming, heritage cereals, and building short, transparent supply chains. His work connects soil health to human health, demonstrating how farms, mills, and bakeries can work together to reshape the future of food.
£30 – Watermill Lunch
About EA Sustain
EA Sustain is a festival about environment, culture and entrepreneurship that takes place at Firstsite, the contemporary art museum in Colchester, every year. The event presents top activists, artists and authors who are stimulating change in policy and society at large. The event’s strapline is “Flourishing localism is key to decarbonisation,” explaining why, in addition to environmentalists, the festival features entrepreneurs who have built successful and influential businesses in East Anglia. Find out more at easustain.com.
Terms and conditions: Tickets are non-refundable.
