'Dean Park Primary produced a school cookbook based around the theme of diversity and inclusion. The Parent Council compiled family favourite recipes from pupils, school families, local food businesses, community groups, activists, politicians and prominent people. It has 180 pages of donated recipes from starters through to baking, pupil illustrations, hints and tips and comments about diversity and inclusion. It was a project initiated to raise awareness, educate, our position as global citizens and the role we have to ensure better understanding of individuality.
The Parent Council and school team launched the project on our second annual ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ week. Pupils, and the PC, wrote persuasive letters to prominent people asking for recipes, comments and cooking tips, as well the local community for their tasty recipes. We even managed to get a few videos to share on our social media – including a video especially for us from chef Jamie Oliver! We had a pupil competition to design the front cover, judged by our Head Teacher and the runner up designs featured inside the book. We used a local printing company to produce the books in a spiral bound format. We sold 300 copies of the cookbook to school families and the community. The PC ensured we covered our costs with the sales, and all the profits ring-fenced for projects that will support diversity, inclusion and equity. After the cookbook launch, we held a cooking competition with pupils with categories exploring international cuisine, cookbook recipes, and new ingredients. We shared their fantastic makes via social media (with parental permission!) and had a panel of judges to choose the winners. It was a great opportunity for pupils to have a new avenue to explore creativity, health eating and explore culture through food. Contributions were received from animator and director Nick Park, Bake Off’s Nadiya Hussain and Peter Sawkins, writers Cressida Cowell and Anthony Horowitz, chef Yotam Ottolenghi, many top Scottish politicians and charities such as Children First, Show Racism The Red Card Scotland and LGBT Youth Scotland to name a few! It was a very time-consuming challenge to compile the contributions but definitely well worth it! The PC will continue to support diversity, inclusion and equity through the annual ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ week. We have a week of activities for all year groups to shine a light of these topics with focus on home/parent support including anti-bullying, anti-racism and advancing equality. We carefully assessed the demand from school families and pre-sold cookbooks close to the printing window. This ensured that we secured a great value printing cost and were able to get the cookbooks out to families really quickly.'
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