In September the Transforming UK Food Systems SPF Programme will be holding an annual grantholders meeting for its funded projects and training programmes. This year, the University of Sheffield will host the meeting.
The meeting is an opportunity for all the funded projects involved in the programme to give an update on their developments and progress, as well as to highlight any barriers and challenges they have come across so far. Most importantly, it also provides the chance to network and make new connections with others in similar fields of research.
This is the first year that the annual meeting will be held in person, as well as being the first time both the four consortia projects and the 11 projects funded in the second call are invited. We hope that this event will encourage cross-project collaboration and the identification of synergies and opportunities throughout the projects.
The last annual meeting was a great success, with around 100 attendees from across all four consortia projects and the CDT training programme management group.
In response to feedback from the consortia, we also designated two sessions at the previous meeting to deeper dives into specific research areas that spanned multiple projects.
Members of the consortia identified and led the topics for these special interest group (SIG) sessions. Since the meeting, some of them have progressed with meetings and conversations, as well as an in-person workshop and site visit.
This year’s annual meeting has the themed focus of the SIGs and aims to develop these ideas and working groups further. We want to create platforms for:
- shared learnings
- dissemination of findings
- identification of knowledge gaps
- increasing the impact of research and interventions.
We hope that this year’s event will bring projects and stakeholders together to form new collaborations and exchange ideas. We also want the meeting to help develop a strong network to drive transformation in the UK food system.
