Thursday 16th October to Saturday 8th November 2008
20th May 2008 Screen Bites Edible Playground is Chelsea Courtyard Garden of the Year The judges at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show have chosen The Edible Playground for the top award in the Courtyard Garden category, and given Nick Williams-Ellis’s tiny garden designed to go in a primary school playground a gold medal. Delighted representatives of Dorset Cereals, who sponsored the garden, The Gardens Group who provided the plants, and Cerne Abbas based designer Nick opened the all important envelope at 8pm this morning, to discover that their garden had been chosen.             Patrick Horton, MD of Dorset Cereals, with Screen Bites vice chairman Fanny Charles at the Dorset Cereals Edible Playground garden   A corner of the garden           The garden is based on the Screen Bites Edible Playground project, started in 2007 by Nichola Motley in four schools across Dorset, to complement the annual food film festival. Dorset Cereals, whose headquarters is at Poundbury near Dorchester, took up the project, sponsoring Edible Playground packs for schools and organising the Chelsea garden, and another much larger one to be constructed at the Hampton Court Flower Show in July. Known at Chelsea as Dorset Cereals Edible Playground, the garden has attracted great interest not only from the judges and celebrities, but from teachers keen to establish a garden at their own schools. The project was set up to encourage young pupils to learn about planting, growing, tending and harvesting edible plants, and then to cook them with the help of local chefs and serve them up for school meals. Three pupils from Thornford School, Olivia Morgan, Imogen Jones and Martha Solloway, went up to Chelsea on Monday to see the garden. They have been working with Nichola on the Screen Bites Edible Playground project since it started in spring last year, and were thrilled that their names were drawn out of the hat. Click here for more on Screen-Bites Edible Playground project...           Nick Williams Ellis (Designer), Gay Pirrie-Weir (Screen Bites), Dominic Murphy (Thornford School Gardening Club), Olivia Morgan, Imogen Jones and Martha Solloway
After a very successful 2007 festival, Screen Bites has an even busier programme in 2008. The main festival will be spread over four weeks, from 16th October to 8th November, and includes three family early evening shows with tea. We are linking up with Artsreach for the opening night at Tarrant Keyneston. For the first time Screen Bites is working with the well-established Purbeck Film Festival to put on a food and film evening at the Rex Cinema in Wareham. We also have two “fringe” events, as part of this year’s South Somerset Food Festival. The 2008 Screen Bites programme will be launched at the Sturminster Cheese Festival on Saturday 13th September, when we will show a popular foodie film and serve delicious food with a cheese flavour. That means we’ll be showing films at 19 venues across the county and just over the border. The Screen Bites project The Edible Playground, launched last year, has received national attention in 2008 thanks to Dorset Cereals, with a courtyard garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in May and a show garden at the Hampton Court Flower Show in July. Thanks to all 40 food producers, including 17 new Screen Bites participants, who brought along their food to the 2007 festival and met many new customers. This year we are hoping to welcome them all back, and introduce some new businesses making and selling food in Dorset. We shall be showing a variety of new feature films, old favourites and the ever popular Savouring Europe documentaries made by the Screen Bites chairman Robert Golden. There will also be talks, demonstrations and book signings during the festival. Keep checking the website for the latest news, and visit the Programme page
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