Solway goes to Holyrood
Pam Taylor and Gordon Mann attended two events at the Scottish Parliament recently to showcase local produce and to explore the potential to develop food trails in southern Scotland.
We wanted to ensure the seafood sector was represented while being as fair as possible across the different types of fisheries; the aim being to raise awareness of the value of the seafood sector, opportunities for coastal communities, the high environmental quality of the coastal and marine environment, the potential for tie-in with the Solway Coast Heritage Trail, and other coastal and marine initiatives.
We prepared a simple flier with snippets of information about local sea fisheries, and had the Sea Life Sea Food booklet reprinted to take along to the event. Between the two, this hopefully gives an appropriate mix of information about south west Scotland’s sea fisheries, sea food, environment and heritage.
The Holyrood event was split into two parts - firstly an evening reception where we presented an informal but very busy situation in terms of trying to get messages across. Therefore, to raise the profile of the marine/fisheries/seafood element we took along a performer from the Tide Machine which is a Dumfries & Galloway based performing arts initiative. Florencia Garcia Chafuén gave a creative interpretation of the form and character of a crustacean… This created quite a stir in Parliament and certainly helped us get the message across.
The following day there was discussion in one of the Committee Rooms in the Parliament featuring producers from both Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders. Featuring strongly in all of this was Savour the Flavours, our own local campaign group that is now seen as the benchmark for this work throughout Scotland.