On 13 May we launched our Future of … series at our Fulham showroom.  Our plan is to explore the future of a whole range of topics, helped by stimulating speakers and our Roundhouse family friends.  For this inaugural session, a crowd of eating enthusiasts gathered to hear from our illustrious panel of food, nutrition and design experts.

Education: the key ingredient in our food future

Clare Brass, whose work has included mentoring circular economy principles across design disciplines, re-designing living conditions for the chickens that supply McDonald’s and writing a Future of Food Report for Sainsbury’s, led the evening, drawing out a crucial thread from the speakers: that education is at the heart of our food future.

Journalist and broadcaster Sheila Dillon, best known as the voice of BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme, has been at the cutting edge of food journalism for more than three decades.  She described learning to cook as a vital life skill, one that can literally ‘save us’, by helping arrest chronic obesity and diseases like diabetes, reducing the punishing effect of these on the struggling NHS.  She bemoaned ‘food porn’ programmes that are making the public feel inadequate about their cooking ability and pushing more of us into a fast-food lifestyle.  Her focus has, for some time now, been on food education at school level.  Did you know that almost all Japanese schools teach cookery through primary and middle school years?  – and that there is no obesity in Japan? 

“We’re not going to have kitchens without a cooking generation. We have three generations now of people who don’t cook but exist on ‘food-like substances’. We have normalised rubbish food in the UK. This has to change by making cooking compulsory in schools,” shares Sheila Dillon.

A unique education model at Greenside Primary School

Sheila had recently visited Greenside Primary School in London W4 whose unique learning model integrates food and film into its curriculum, with a hands-on learning environment that involves growing and harvesting vegetables from the school garden to cook lunches for the school. The impact widens as the children go home and inspire their parents to cook, just as they have at school.  The Chefs in Schools programme was also mentioned as an exemplar grassroots project that is punching above its weight in terms of changing our outdated school dinners policy.

From farm to kitchen: bringing production closer to home

Bristol-based chef and owner of The Pony Restaurant Group, Josh Eggleton MBE, grew up in South Bristol near the picturesque Chew Valley in North Somerset. He has become a respected figure in the UK culinary scene and has a strong commitment to education and innovation in hospitality.  As well as running cookery classes at The Pony, one of his 7 restaurants, he is keen to pass on knowledge about growing and harvesting your own produce as well.  His next big venture is the Pony Farm bus, complete with travelling chickens – a food education tool to bring the farm to the city and help people understand where food comes from.  This, he believes (and the panel agreed) is key to making good food choices.

“For us, it’s all about accessibility, so we’re now taking the idea of what the Pony is – the kitchen, the micro-farm, the learning opportunities – and distilling that into a double decker bus. So we’re taking the Pony On Tour. It’s a mobile restaurant and a mobile school. This is the DNA of our business,” – says Josh.

The kitchen as the heart of design and learning

Dr Guan Lee, Associate Professor of Architecture and co-founder of Material Architecture Lab at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, founded Grymsdyke Farm, in the Chilterns, Buckinghamshire, to encourage a design practice that comes out of a real understanding of the materials around us and at our fingertips. What better example than the masterful clay vessel that his team created within their own clay-laden field? 

Whilst generating food is not his endgame, education and encouraging a different approach to making is.  “For me, the most important piece in the puzzle is the kitchen”, he said, making Roundhouse design founder Craig Matson’s eyes light up.  At Grymsdyke Farm, he has positioned the kitchen between the library and the workshop so that it is the engine room to both.  “The kitchen feeds the mind”, he said. 

The future kitchen: where next?

Our guests went away, buzzing with new knowledge and ideas and buoyed up by the delicious Nyetimber and canapés provided by our generous partners and as part of Roundhouse’s inimitable hospitality.  By the way, last note, did you know that the word hospitality comes from hospital? (Josh told us) – so it really is about caring for others, in the most holistic sense of the word. 

Visit one of our seven showrooms to discover how our design team can help create your perfect kitchen of the future.

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Roundhouse designs and crafts beautiful, bespoke kitchens that reflect not just current trends but timeless principles of quality craftsmanship and thoughtful design. Each piece is handmade at our own factory in the Malvern Hills, ensuring exceptional quality and sustainability in every project.