What is your background/back story?
I was born in Newcastle and my parents lived in Low Fell in Gateshead, although my mum and dad were from Birtley. The grandfather on one side played football for Newcastle United and Cardiff City while my other grandfather worked at the Co-op. Those values have followed me ever since.
I had a bit of a independent streak and quite early on got into a little bother with this. I was about five and used to walk home from primary school. I was fascinated by fire and was sold some large matches called London Lights by a corner shop. I ended up setting some shrubs on fire on way home. I have always been a bit of a firestarter!
My parents thought I would benefit from more supervision after the fire incident and consequently I ended up moving to Newcastle Prep School and after that the Royal Grammar School. At the RGS I felt they were trying to channel us and was quite a rebellious teenager, although there was one teacher who was onside and that was the art teacher called Mr Egan-Fowler. Outside of school as teenagers we started a charity called the Robin Hood Gang which gave me a creative outlet and raised money for projects in India.
After school and university I was lucky enough to win a place on expedition to South America with Operation Raleigh where we had some great adventures and worked on communities projects in Chile. I thought I could become Harrison Ford after that and did a Masters degree in environmental approaches to agriculture. This degree included learning to fly but I could not find any crop spraying jobs in Newcastle so I ended up as a graduate trainee for a logistics company!
I started off working in the cold storage in Bracknell and I was the only graduate who survived working there at minus 25 degrees. Then it was off to a chill store and then an ambient warehouse. So I can gauge my career progression by an increase in temperature as it was getting slightly warmer all the time! I ended up at the head office for TNT in Warwickshire and then worked in Germany and finally in China. Over time I recognised I was feeling more and more empty. I was losing my sense of self and values, so I resigned and came back to the North East.
Why should people be interested in the work of Big River Bakery?
The bakery is deliberately based in a non-affluent part of the city and I make healthy food available to all. It’s just a kind of way of doing business; not about just extracting from the community.
I suppose it goes back to the cooperative movement; we have been bombarded and battered economically and socially and need to start again and think about how to bring back the cooperative movement. With 21st century thinking.
As much as we can we work sustainably and our aim is to produce affordable and healthy local food. A different and more equitable food system is fundamental to dealing with the Climate Crisis. We believe in quality, fairness and sustainability. It’s a journey for us and our community.
How long have you been working with Big River?
I started up Big River Bakery, as I was thinking to myself “how do I find purpose in life” and I wanted the North East to be a place where the food system is sustainable and affordable and that the world would come here to learn from us, like they learned from us during the Industrial Revolution. I decided to set up a bakery and I volunteered in another bakery baking at Dilston College, we started bey selling bread in Wylam library on Saturday mornings.
I found the site for Big River about six years later and was committed to getting it. Then I got the money to make it happen. We are now six years in Shieldfield and a lot has changed with a great team and lots of loyal customers both local and those that travel a long way including from USA and Australia !
What do Big River do?
We have a bakery on the site and we sell bread here and online including sending stotties to Geordie exiles. We have people coming from Utah to study how to make them in stottie-making lessons!
There’s no doubt that the Hairy Bikers put us on the map we were featured in one of their programmes and I don’t think we would be where we are without that. Also we do get involved in a much wider engagement helping people with barriers to employment.
Can you tell me about successes?
We’re still going and now we have 17 staff, one-third of whom are neurodiverse. People recognise that we are doing something about kindness and inspiring. For people to be inspired by others, it has to be about what they do, not just talking. People in the local community have taken us to their heart and it is a humbling thing and I am always amazed and grateful.
Can you tell me about your plans for the future?
We’re looking at premises for a new bakery. I’m hoping we can bring a sense of hope to Byker as something’s happened in Shieldfield and so we’re now looking at Byker. We need to find money for investment to make it happen. I’ve been asked to develop Big River Bakeries in County Durham, Northumberland and even Cyprus. But I’m no magician and we need help from partners and communities.
What other initiatives are you involved in and which other organisations do you work with?
We are connected to the Byker project, which is called Platform Places, It is funded by National Lottery Community Fund and look at how to bring derelict high street buildings into community ownership and use. Big River Bakery helped get Byker to be one of the five learning pilots for this national scheme and we are proud to be one of the Platform Places pilots across England.
Why is your work important?
I believe in bottom up initiatives. At the climate change summit in Johannesburg I went to over twenty years ago I saw political circus going on, but it made me realise change needs to come from the bottom up. We need to make positive things are possible where people live. Making healthy food and opportunity available to all people.
What would be your vision of a better future for people in the North East and the country and the world as a whole?
I am led by the vision of a North East as a place where sustainable, healthy food is produced at scale and people. Building communities where people feel inspired to act and make the future, they want for themselves and their communities.
To learn more about the Big River bakery see here.
And here is more information about Big River Bakery:
Here is a few articles written about us.
