In the FOOD FOREST project, the community is at the heart of the initiative.
Communication and transparency are essential to building trust and bringing people together. The project seeks to empower citizens and community stakeholders with the knowledge, skills and confidence needed to take an active role in shaping its future. Through ongoing hands-on learning opportunities and shared decision-making processes, the aim is to foster a genuine sense of ownership and stewardship. By fostering active participation, collaboration and shared responsibility for its care and development, the project aims to create thriving and resilient food forests, giving true meaning to the concept of community-managed food forests.
To this end, a wide range of events and activities are organised to invite citizens, community groups and organisations to engage with the project and become part of its day-to-day life. These activities range from project presentations and information sessions to public lectures, educational activities, volunteering days, and co-design sessions, all aimed at facilitating and promoting learning, participation, and collaboration.
In Italy and Portugal, where the establishment and implementation of food forests is planned for a later phase of the project, direct engagement has focused primarily on interviews and meetings to identify key actors and stakeholders and better understand local needs, challenges and opportunities. Meanwhile, in Spain and Estonia, where the pilot forests are already in place, face-to-face initiatives have proven to be an effective way of bringing the project closer to the people it aims to serve.
March 2025 – Project presentation (Espacio Escénico):
Once EIT Food officially announced that the project had been awarded funding, a public presentation of the project was held in Artajona, introduced by the Mayor.
Representatives of all the Spanish consortium partners participated in the event, explaining the project and the role and activities of each organisation within it.
More than 80 people attended the event.
Visit to the ‘Parque de los Sentidos de Noain’ (Park of the Senses of Noain) - This visit was made with the intention of seeing other successful projects and looking for interesting ideas that could be replicated in Artajona.
August 2025 Explanatory talk about the project - A general explanation of the European project was given, followed by an explanation of the actions that have been carried out in Artajona since the project began.
Practical participation has been equally important. Volunteers contributed to soil sampling activities and took part in planting days during which more than 200 trees were planted in the Artajona Food Forest.
— Community participants working together at the Artajona pilot site.)
The project was also presented at the Artajona Seniors’ Centre, known locally as the Jubiloteca. Claudia Pennese from RB3 and Isabel Guevara Fernández from EHU spent the morning with members of the senior citizens’ club, sharing information about the initiative and involving older residents in its development.
These activities connect the food forest with the wider life of the municipality and create opportunities for people of different ages and backgrounds to contribute their experience, knowledge and ideas.
In Tallinn, community participation has brought together urban gardening specialists, local residents, trainees and people interested in discovering food forests and edible plants.
During the Urban Gardening Experience Exchange Day, Maria Derlõš presented an overview of urban gardening in Tallinn. The session also introduced the FOOD FOREST project and was accompanied by a press release for the wider event.
The Tallinn Food Forest co-design event gave participants an opportunity to contribute directly to the development of the pilot, share ideas and explore how the site could respond to community needs.
Public learning activities have addressed questions such as whether food grown in the city is safe and have introduced the research being conducted in Tallinn’s urban gardens. Participants in the Trainers Training programme also delivered introductory sessions on Community Food Forests for people who were unfamiliar with the concept.
A series of practical days helped prepare and establish the Community Food Forest. Participants worked together on the site, while a public event introduced the project’s progress and supported the creation of a new ecological guild within the food forest.
The programme has also included wild-plant trips and shared cooking activities delivered in both Estonian and Russian. These experiences connect ecological knowledge with food culture and provide an informal setting in which participants can learn from one another.
Additional public planting events have introduced new plants to the Community Food Forest while updating participants on the project’s development. Visits to food forests in Türi have extended this exchange of knowledge beyond the pilot site and allowed participants to learn from other practical examples.
Together, these activities show how FOOD FOREST is developing through participation rather than around it. By creating opportunities to learn, contribute and make decisions collectively, the project is laying the foundations for food forests that communities can recognise, support and care for over the long term.
FOOD FOREST is a European initiative creating and testing Community Food Forests as living spaces for regenerative food production, ecological restoration, education and social innovation.Through pilot sites in Artajona and Tallinn, partners from across Europe work with local communities to develop knowledge and models that can be replicated and scaled.
Connecting Community Food Forests, projects and practitioners across Europe.
welcomes collaboration with institutions, researchers, practitioners, communities and organisations working on regenerative landscapes, food systems and community-led innovation.
Rotary Forests supports FOOD FOREST as a Strategic Benefactor, contributing economic, technical, creative and infrastructure resources to the project and its digital platform.
