When a group of squatters first entered an old pub in Cambridge, with its smashed-in windows and sticky floors, none of them could have predicted the thriving home and mutual aid hub it would become.
In the autumn of 2020, amidst rising food poverty and pandemic-worsened inequality, and after hosting successful brunches and ‘chilli Tuesdays’, the squatters living in the newly-named ‘Lockon’ building embarked on a mission to revamp and reopen the old pub kitchen. This is how Cambridge Community Kitchen (CCK) was born. On the first day, CCK served up 8 meals. A year on, we celebrated our 20,000th meal. Today, 300 active volunteers from across the city come together to cook and deliver around 500 portions of free, nourishing, plant-based food per week.
Here, some CCK volunteers reflect on this journey, and on the importance of mutual aid.
Since its inception, CCK has been committed to its non-hierarchical organisation. This structure helps us stay flexible and avoid many typical pitfalls of the non-profit industrial complex, which can be corporatist and entrench power dynamics between ‘philanthropists’ and ‘service users’. Even with hundreds of volunteers, we still have no paid positions or formal funding, and self-organise every shift in small teams. Operating a professional kitchen, along with the admin for an organisation this large, means that hierarchies of knowledge and experience inevitably emerge. For us, it is important to reflect and regularly change our roles and systems to stop these turning into hierarchies of power. Training for any key admin, cooking, cleaning or delivery role is made regularly available, and a culture of knowledge-sharing helps stop these roles becoming too formalised. For example, cooking tips and tricks are shared through regular kitchen skillshares, and admin volunteers pick up tasks on an ad-hoc basis, training each other as they go. Any kitchen ‘team lead’ is encouraged to train other team leads, and anyone who turns up for a couple of kitchen shifts can do this training.
Like any system, ours isn’t perfect, but organising this way means that we can contribute according to our capacity and skillset, and that everyone’s initiative and energy is valued. Often, in a hierarchical setting, we can fall into the trap of expecting to be told what to do, meaning that we neglect our creativity, greet instructions with resentment, and often feel stuck in a certain role. Non-hierarchy thrives by welcoming new ideas, role-switching, and creating a system where everyone involved shares responsibility.
At the core of non-hierarchical organising is a respect for equality and autonomy. This, too, is central to the anarchist principle of mutual aid, which CCK aims to embody. Mutual aid exists as an alternative to philanthropy (you might have heard the phrase ‘solidarity not charity’ which pretty much sums it up). Whereas charity rests on a vertical dynamic where some have more than others, and the ‘others’ are dependent on the benevolence of the ‘some’ to get their basic needs, mutual aid operates through a web of individuals, each with both needs and skills/means, supporting each other in various ways to ensure that everyone can thrive. There are many ways that we try to build this ideal into the way we work in CCK.
Firstly, we don’t have a strict divide between people who volunteer and those who receive our meals, with many people doing both (either at the same time, or after their circumstances have improved).We also separate out each role into chunks, so that everyone can contribute according to their specific skills and capacities.
It’s important to us that we don’t—and never will—ask questions, means-test, or ask people to jump through hoops in order to receive food. The pre-requisites and hurdles the government and most organisations put between people and food prevent many of the most vulnerable from being able to meet their basic needs. Migrants with no recourse to public funds, disabled people who are poorly served by state care infrastructure, and those with complex needs that aren’t legible to the state often fall between the cracks of more legitimised support structures.
All kinds of people share the food we make, from busy parents or full-time workers who don’t have time to cook healthy meals to those in covid isolation or suffering poor mental health, to people whose motor issues mean they can’t chop veg, to rough sleepers, asylum seekers, and students waiting for their next loan to come in. Nobody is required to give a reason for their food request—we operate on a basis of mutual respect and aim to be available to anyone who might need our support.
As well as trying to embody mutual aid principles within our organisation, CCK is part of a growing network of mutuality in Cambridge. Our delivery volunteers help refer any needs we can’t meet onto other organisations, including the ‘freeshop’ of clothes and household items that runs from the same squat as the kitchen, or our sister organisation Cambridge Solidarity Fund who distribute small grants on a no-questions-asked basis to anyone in need. Some of our vegetables come from Cofarm—our local community farm—and we also have a beautifully symbiotic relationship with a local hostel: they often receive food donations they cannot use, which they bring to us. In return, we cook meals for them, and make sure the foods they bring us are put to good use—either in our meals, or in the community fridge, which our hosts at the Lockon keep stocked and available for any member of the public to access at any time.
Running from a squatted pub has allowed us to use a catering kitchen and to prepare meals in bulk quantities. These facilities have helped us obtain a four-star food hygiene rating from the council—a rare thing for a squat kitchen. But operating from a squat is also precarious, and is about to become even more so. At the moment, trespass in non-residential buildings is a matter for the civil courts. This means that evictions are a lengthy and costly process, upon which some landlords are reluctant to embark. But the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill will make all trespass a criminal offence. These proposals will be most devastating for GRT communities, but they will also affect operations like ours, which put unused buildings to good use for the community. We are lucky to have a number of back-up spaces available to us, which means that, if the worst were to happen, we would be able to continue our increasingly necessary work.
Many of the thousands of mutual aid projects which started up around Britain during the COVID-19 lockdowns have now either ‘wound down’ or incorporated themselves into charities. The burst of energy for mutual aid which flourished around that time appears to have mostly dissipated. And yet, mutual aid is more needed than ever.
Millions continue to suffer the effects of austerity, ever-rising living costs, and the ongoing suppression of protest and dissent. At the same time, anti-migrant, anti-GRT, anti-queer and anti-disabled rhetoric is intensifying, with the press and the main political parties seemingly locked in a battle to outdo one another in the cruelty of their proclamations. In such a climate, it is important to create spaces where we can welcome and support one another without relying on the state, which has repeatedly proven itself indifferent. In nourishing our communities, we are actively refusing to participate in this culture of dehumanisation and indifference. From here, we can build support networks resilient enough to weather what is coming.
It may look like we’re just chopping onions for hours on end, but a revolution fights on its stomach.
Get involved
If you are local to Cambridge and would like to get involved, or if you want tips on how to set up your own community kitchen in your area, get in touch with us. You can also help by donating to Cambridge Solidarity Fund. Let’s build a world where the means of flourishing are open to all.