FEAST is designed to create a paradigm shift for food systems to ones that are fairer, healthier and more environmentally friendly for all actors (primary production to consumption), particularly vulnerable populations. Our pathway to impact will begin by working through our Multi-Actor Approach (MAA) to leverage the results and outputs from FEAST to ensure broad-scale strategic dissemination of the project’s findings and key messages, enabling their uptake and integration in future strategies and practices developed by local, regional and national governments, and simultaneously engaging the general public (consumers, citizens), production/supply side actors and young professionals
in the implementation of such strategies - thus inspiring each target group to move upwards in the engagement pyramid, and further exploiting FEAST’s potential to build capacity. The dissemination and exploitation planning will ensure the generated results achieve FEAST’s intended outcomes and maximises the overall impacts of the project by efficiently reaching clearly defined stakeholders through wide-reaching communication activities, efficient dissemination and impactful capacity building. The overarching objective of WP8 is to raise levels of awareness of food systems actors, including citizens, about transition towards healthy and sustainable food behaviours.
Objectives
- To develop a strategic DEC plan and continuous monitoring of activities to deliver high impact, and outreach to raise interest and collect feedback on FEAST from stakeholders in Europe and internationally.
- To create content to boost the visibility of FEAST objectives and activities with multiple audiences in food and health systems (including media and public), for both traditional media and digital media.
- To disseminate project results to a target audience through scientific and other channels (i.e. community talks, workshops) at European and local level.
- To exploit project results and improve the transfer of technical and scientific knowledge outside the core consortium to facilitate exploitation of results.
Methods
The FEAST’s communication follows five steps in a continuous loop with updates planned yearly. Separate plans will be created for micro, meso and macro levels of the food systems and the stakeholders therein. A suite of tools and materials that are essential for uni- and- bidirectional communication activities will be developed. A unique and visually appealing FEAST visual identity will be created, along with templates to facilitate communication and guidance for using these. We will communicate FEAST findings and activities using social media campaigns (via LinkedIn, twitter, Facebook), ‘science walks’ in public places of interest, science cafes in museums, and online events about food e-newsletters and press-kits for media – messaging will be tailored and communicated to individuals and target groups. Furthermore, active outreach and communication will take place with key actors who can influence dietary behaviour (i.e., teachers, healthcare professionals, city officials, wider NGO networks) all of who will be encouraged to join FEAST’s Community of Practice. A library of additional promotional materials (i.e., videos, pod casts, infographics, booklets and brochures) will also be created.
We will also coordinate DEC activities with other funded projects and initiatives by exploiting the FEAST network to build on and scale the results of past and ongoing research projects. Input from national, EU and international bodies will inform the activities. For example, in WP4 drawing mainly on best practice project outputs, SUSMETRO will engage with the FabLab Network, ICLEI City Network and Public Health Network to establish a FEAST Community of Practice (CoP) that is dedicated to the transition towards healthy and sustainable diets by subscribing to the FEAST strategies and actions as developed for the Replicator Cities. Rather than just pass on project results and tools, the FEAST CoP will be stimulated to run policy campaigns, to re-design their urban food system and to participate in joint activities (i.e., conferences, workshops and position papers), and will initiate project clustering from the topic (Fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food systems) and from other relevant topics (i.e., HORIZON-HLTH-2022-STAYHLTH-01-05).
