Our Story

Inspired by the Incredible Edible Network, established in 2012 in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, we share their vision of creating a kind, confident and connected community through the power of food.

In February 2025, our journey took an exciting twist when we set up our latest project – Your Cookery School – in response to requests for support in cooking tasty, healthy and affordable meals from scratch. At Your Cookery School, we’ll be sharing skills and knowledge about the importance of good nutrition. We’ll be inspiring a love of cooking and exploring new and exciting ways to cut food waste and reduce household bills.

Incredible Edible Gosport (IEG) was set up in 2022 as a Community Interest Company (CIC) to help support strong connections between organisations, groups and businesses involved in the local food system. We took part in Nottingham University’s Ingenuity programme for social enterprises and were delighted to reach the national finals in 2023.

Thanks to funding from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and with the support of the Gosport Allotment Association, we set up the Gosport Community Food Network. We organised Plant and Share, Spud and Seed share events and took part in events across the Borough.

We were proud to contribute towards Gosport Food Partnership’s successful application to join the Sustainable Food Places Network in June 2024. Through that we linked up with other Partnerships across the country and that’s where we discovered the Full of Beans campaign encouraging us all to grow, cook and eat more beans, lentils an pulses. With funding from the Household Support Fund and My Food Community, we were able to deliver over 200 Full of Beans recipe bags and cards and deliver workshops across Gosport.

We’ve been amazed by the impact the Full of Beans project has had, helping to improve health and wellbeing, increase knowledge and skills and bring people together to enjoy good food. 

Here’s one man’s story about the incredible impact our Full of Beans campaign has had on his health in just a very short space of time.

Tim, 67:  I had a health check in November 2024. I was shocked when the nurse said that my cholesterol levels were seriously high and that I was heading for a heart attack and/or diabetes. She asked me how I felt and I said ‘Fine – I play competitive tennis twice a week and am very active doing gardening and things like that.’ She was about to put me on statins until I told her what my diet was like and I’m glad I was honest with her because as I spoke I realised how bad it sounded. I live on my own and didn’t have much motivation for cooking so I’d regularly get a pie out of the freezer and throw some chips in the air fryer. I love football and would have a few cans during a match.

She gave me 3 months to change my ways and I made some changes but I was stuck for inspiration about what to cook until I was given some of Sarah’s Full of Beans recipe cards and someone showed me how to make the recipes. What a difference it made! I’ve now lost over 2 stone within a short space of time. Sarah helped me understand more about foods that might look ok but she explained that many of them contain things that aren’t good for us. I was surprised to hear about flavoured yoghurts and porridge in sachets for example but Sarah was able to offer alternative ideas like natural yoghurt with fresh or frozen fruit and plain porridge oats with fruit, nuts, seeds etc. It’s much tastier and costs less so what’s not to like?’