Community Partner Spotlight: Ben Thorpe, York Food Festival

Welcome to our first Community Partner spotlight blog! This feature is designed to give an insight into one of our Community Partners, to find out a bit more about what they do, and to learn about their experience of working with York Cares.

This month’s feature is written by Ben Thorpe who is responsible or the events programmes at both York Food and Drink Festival and York Chocolate Festival. We’ve been delighted to work with Ben through our Social Clubs programme and we’re really looking forward to another activity as part of York Chocolate Festival.

Community Partners are vital to our work as they’re our links into the community and allow us to get people involved in activity across our programmes. Thank you Ben for taking the time to write this feature and, for all the support so far. We’re looking forward to continuing to work together!

Ben writes, I’m Ben and I’m intimately involved in the food & hospitality scene in York. I’ve run www.yorkonafork.com since 2014 which has led me into launching guided food tours of the city as well as joining the Great Taste Awards as a Judging Coordinator. I also now am responsible for the events programs at York Food & Drink Festival and York Chocolate Festival.

York Cares first came to my attention when a friend of mine suggested joining a free “York Markets History” tour that they were running. This was really engaging and well run and gave me the idea to see about collaborating with them at the upcoming York Food Festival. At this not-for-profit event we really want to give as much back to the community as possible, for example we offer over a thousand free workshop places to KS2 School Children through the event as well as free hands on activities for the public. Offering our spaces at no cost to groups such as York Cares is a great way for us to broaden engagement and offer genuine value to community groups in York and the surrounding areas.

The team at York Cares were easy to get in touch with, communicative and straight forward which is an enormous advantage when trying to maintain an events program with so many strands. I was confident that I could let the team carry on with minimal hand holding, confidence which turned out to be well placed as they left the space in perfect order after their event.
I’ve actually passed contact details for the York Cares team onto a few other businesses already and suggested they collaborate. The quality of interactions with community groups can vary given the inevitably large and numerous pressures on them but York Cares proved themselves a valuable and professional partner. I’m presently working on the program for York Chocolate Festival which will include them and have actually offered my own time and expertise to lead a tour for them later in the year in a personal capacity.”

If you’re one of our Community Partners and you’d like to feature in an upcoming Community Partner Spotlight feature, we’d love to hear from you. Contact Georgia via info@yorkcares.co.uk for more information.