Reimagine Reading: Community Lunch

Last year, 450+ local people participated in a ReadingCAN project to 'reimagine Reading' as a happier, healthier, more climate-friendly place to live. This community lunch came out of that . Let's keep co-creating the town we want to live in. Bring your appetite and your ideas for a climate-friendly Reading on Sunday 14 June - we'll do the rest! Anyone can drop-in but please reserve a spot to help us plan and to avoid food waste.

💚PROGRAMME OVERVIEW: What's on in the park?💚

FOOD: We've invited two popular local restaurants to set up in the park:

• Vegivores (selling delicious climate-friendly burgers and burritos)
• Tutu's Ethiopian Table (selling their famous misr wot and vegetables)

£8 today only (usually +£12)! This special festival price was made possible by sponsorship from REDA and Reading Borough Council. The park cafe will be open as usual for ice creams, tea and coffee. All activities in the park are free.

FUN:

• Incredible Edible Reading will offer food growing demonstrations and free growing kits
• Commando Jugendstil and Imagine Ecotopia will help kids and adults contribute to an audacious shared vision of an abundant, climate-friendly Reading
• Beatroots will be there with a shaker-making workshop for kids and vibrant samba parade
• Kids and curious adults can learn how to make paint from fruits and vegetables
• Local creatives can join a Solarpunk Imagining Workshop at Reading Bike Hub in the morning (facilitated by London School of Solarpunk), which ends with some activities in the park in the afternoon.
• Add to a Storytelling Tree, Future of Reading Wall and Intergalactic Postbox

See you there! Let's start living the happier, healthier more climate-friendly Reading we all know is possible.

🌟WHAT'S ON? The Programme in detail...🌟

🌱Grow Where You Are! with Incredible Edible Reading 🌱

Do you have a pot, balcony or garden? Are you keen to grow some of your own food but don't know where to start? If you are already growing, do have questions, or do you want to swap seeds? Incredible Edible Reading is here to help with:

• 🌱Growing demonstrations – Simple, climate-friendly techniques for growing your own food, with tips for beginners and seasoned growers alike
• 🌿Growing kits & seed swap – Pick up a free pre-made kit to get you started, plus successful seedlings to inspire you. You can also participate in the RFGN seed swap here!
• 🌳Storytelling tree – Share your food-growing stories, memories, and experiences. (Part of IER's Grow Where You Are campaign.)
• 💚 Tips & advice – Take-away guidance whether you're ready to start growing or still exploring the idea
• Find out more about Reading's food-growing story by visiting IER's interactive timeline.
• Just drop in.

🎪Future Creation with Commando Jugendstil 🎪

• 💫 What would Reading be like if we truly served all people equally and functioned in harmony with nature?
• 🎨 Help bring this story of abundance to life! Envision what a good life means in practice, through art, writing and spoken word. Then explore the concrete, collective steps it will take to get there together.
• 🎬This activity is delivered in partnership with the Reading NEB Committee. If you have already seen the People's Emergency Briefing film, this activity may help you process that information in a creative, hopeful way. But you don’t have to have watched the screening to take part.
• Just drop in.

🌈Imagining Ecotopia Activities 🌈The following events are part of the Imagine Reading: Positive Futures Programme curated by Cinergy Studios

• Imagine Ecotopia Workshop for Children and Families: Children and families are invited to explore hopeful futures through 🎨 drawing and painting🌱 ecological imagination activities📮 future messages and storytelling🌿 collaborative art-making and✨ playful creative prompts. Participants will help build the Future of Reading Wall — a growing public artwork filled with drawings, paintings, poems and messages imagining a kinder, greener and more connected future for Reading.
• Launch of the Intergalactic Post Box: This participatory artwork acts as a creative data-gathering tool, inviting the public to submit messages to and from the future and capturing local people's hopes, fears and aspirations for Reading
• Your 2050 Ecotopia Workshop for Creatives: Please register for this event separately here. The workshop invites filmmakers, artists, writers and other creative people to collectively imagine hopeful, sustainable and creative futures for Reading through the lens of Solar Punk — a movement that envisions futures where nature, technology and community exist in harmony. The workshop will contribute to an installation at the Reimagine Reading Community Lunch on the same day.

🎨Colours from the Kitchen Painting Workshop🎨

• Join Petals of the Earth together with Green Tracks Travel for a free, creative, hands-on painting workshop for children and adults with curious minds.
• Explore a palette of beautiful natural paints made from everyday kitchen scraps such as vegetable peels, spices, and other food waste.

🤩Kids shaker-making and samba parade with Beatroots 🤩

• Kids can get some help making a shaker at 11:45am and then join a joyous parade with Beatroots around Forbury Gardens at 12:15. (You'll need to bring two clean cans to make a shaker - we'll provide the rest.)
• If you've never heard this big, beautiful 'beats, brass and bass' band before you're in for a real treat. IYKYK.

🎪LET'S GROW THIS TOGETHER... 🎪
Wouldn't it be great to create a regular, monthly space to start living the future we want to see? Get in touch if you'd like to help bring Reimagine Reading to life, as a sponsor, partner, entrepreneur or imagination partner.

ReimagineReading (noun/verb) To reclaim the future of Reading through imagination and creative collaboration; A culture of continuous, place-based innovation; To prioritise human and ecological wellbeing even if markets don't; To cultivate optimism, agency and collective possibility; To start living the future we know is possible

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This event is part of Reading Climate Festival 2026. Browse the full two-week programme here: https://tinyurl.com/4rzm2tv5

Reading has a new framework for collective climate action, covering the years 2026 to 2030! Local organisations and volunteers can get involved here: www.readingcan.org.uk/ourplan25-30

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