A term originating in the fifteenth-century, the dictionary defines a gleaner as a person who gathers small amounts of grain or other produce left behind by regular harvesters.
In the heart of Walthamstow, north-east London, a modern take on gleaning is happening. Run as a cooperative, The Gleaners is managed by a core team of workers, supported by a broader crew of volunteers and paid staff. Housed within The Hornbeam Centre, a long-standing environmental hub, The Gleaners describe themselves as the resident cooking collective and have been working over the last six years to serve pay-what-you-can meals to local residents, made from surplus and donated food.
Sitting in a cosy sitting room above the café, co-op member Ibby tells me, “This place feels like a pirate ship, it’s so enchanting and higgledy-piggledy when you first come in.” Ibby was on the cusp of leaving London before she discovered The Gleaners and decided to stay. “It was like coming across a clearing in the forest of London life. Everyone cares about the same things as me and everyone’s really nice to each other!” She continues, “It feels genuinely non-hierarchical and everyone’s mucking in.”
Regular visitors to the café range from isolated people seeking company to rough sleepers and more affluent young families. Sandra, a former teacher who’s also part of the co-op, tells me: “The [families] come in and pay the full price for everything. We get that nice mix and I like that.”
Donated food arriving at The Hornbeam comes via several food rescue operations, including City Harvest and The Felix Project. Sandra says: “It can range from any number of things. It can be packet stuff, but mostly we look forward to fruit and vegetables.”
Ibby adds: “Sometimes we get huge numbers of a luxury item, like pineapple or mangoes… We’ll do a call-out on our group. Someone will say, ‘I’ll come and make some mango chutney, does anyone want to come in and do some pickling?’ The spontaneity and experimental element of the cooking is really big.”
Hitting its stride as a food redistribution centre during Covid, when The Gleaners were providing up to 200 meals a day to local people, they describe their work as “solidarity not charity,” with the focus being on mutual aid rather than hand-outs. Sandra explains, “What we offer here is the opportunity to get good quality, organic as much as we can, produce that's freshly cooked and good for people, and they can get it for free if they can’t afford it.
Ibby adds: “It's the idea of creating solutions within the community rather than waiting for someone to come along and hand out a sandwich once a week or dish out just enough benefits for you to survive on.”
Post-Covid, operating as a café amid a cost-of-living crisis hasn’t been easy for The Gleaners, culminating in conversations last year about whether the work was still financially viable. Sandra tells me, “We had ideas of what we wanted to do, but with the café model we couldn't seem to implement them. In November, we thought we’d have to close. But then the clouds opened...”
Ibby continues: “It was crazy. It was two weeks after we’d realised we’d run out of money, and then suddenly we got the funding bids which we’d been applying for in the summer. It meant we were able to make some of the changes we've been talking about for a long time, recognising the difficulties with running the café but the things everyone loved about the space. We were able to do more of that without fighting for our income as a business.”
“Having strong partnerships with other local organisations and The Hornbeam is so important because it makes you feel like you’re not just a failing café trying to change the world. Now we’re a part of a small community of people.”
The Gleaners are shapeshifting into a new iteration this year, running a “community living room” that offers meals, workshops and advice services, while taking on larger catering jobs and offering training in the kitchen, with the hope it may be a springboard for people to gain work elsewhere.
Ibby says, “We’re working specifically with people from migrant and asylum backgrounds. We have this catering collective which a lot of people pop in and out of, where everyone's freelance but will be able to get work under the umbrella of The Gleaners.”
Ibby’s right in her description of The Hornbeam as “higgledy-piggledy”, but it seems to work, with various organisations and projects converging in this space to create a tangible impact. On Friday evenings, The Gleaners cook 40 takeaway meals for local primary school children whose families are at risk of food poverty, while The Hornbeam sends them out on bicycle deliveries. And if The Gleaners have leftover food from batch cooking, portions are frozen and delivered to people who are isolated.
The Gleaners are keen to reframe the perception of the work they do. Ibby says, “Your cooking skills get ‘seen’ here. Labour that’s so often invisible gets recognised and appreciated. So many of the people that work here are mothers, women, or young queer women, and it’s a space where we’re always bigging each other up and teaching each other things. It doesn't feel like you're doing an undervalued or demeaning hospitality or cleaning job in the way that I have in the past. We all value each other.”
Being able to give that sense of value to others, like asylum seekers living at a hotel nearby who come to volunteer because they don’t have access to a kitchen, is a big part of The Gleaners. Sandra says, “We’re part of an ecosystem and we’re a plaster for a lot of the ills relating to food. We just keep applying that plaster. Hopefully that wound will heal and we’ll treat the planet better. People can have that sovereignty in their food and they can get quality where they live, that they can afford. The fact that we provide free meals really does my heart good.”
Ibby wears the Baya Patch Pocket Stripe Organic Cotton Shirt. Sandra wears the TOAST Edo Stripe Wrap Skirt, and Kaia V Neck Wool Cardigan. Kavi wears the Sculptural Seamed Denim Trousers, and Frankie wears the Garment Dyed Linen Wide Leg Trousers and Wave Stripe Knitted Top.
Words by Tsouni Cooper.
Photography by Aloha Bonser-Shaw.
Add a comment