This year, Bandstand Beds teamed up with The Spinney to organise the Common People Feast – a fantastic day with lots of fun-filled activities and delicious food made from produce grown on Clapham Common.

Lambeth Council helped get a small section of Windmill Drive closed for the day so that people could move freely and safely between the Bandstand Beds growing space and the natural thinkers garden at The Spinney. The suspended parking bays were used for stalls promoting local community groups and organisations.

The event provided an excellent opportunity to bring people together to share food growing ideas and ways of building partnerships to work together in the future. In between chats, Poppy from Lambeth’s Edible Living  and Victoria from St Mungo’s also managed to share their gardening expertise with local residents and school children.

Dr Bike’s cycle safe maintenance team took part in the event, and worked through the afternoon carrying out maintenance checks on bikes. People who had cycled over to the feast were well impressed by the free service their bikes received. The Dr Bike guys were joined by officers from Lambeth’s Safer Transport Team who were security tagging bikes, and also moved among the crowd to talk to people about National Hate Crime Awareness Week.

Despite there being so much going on, all eyes were on the main event, the Brixton People’s Kitchen bike where a cookathon was taking place. A talented team of Bandstand Beds chefs were busily conjuring up some amazing food. The menu included Caramelised Pumpkin Dal, Butternut Pumpkin & Sage Risotto and Autumn Coconut Curry – and it was all truly delicious!

It was wonderful to see so many people enjoying this Lambeth event on the Common and it was a real pleasure to welcome friends form Wandsworth Vision to join in the fun, too.

The afternoon was rounded off with a raffle which had some fantastic prizes donated by local businesses. Through this, and other donations made on the day, Bandstand Beds were able to cover their costs for the event, making this an absolutely free feast for everyone!

For more information about Bandstand Beds and The Spinney, visit their website. More details about The Spinney can be found here.