Health workers identified the need to engage with black minority ethnic (BME) communities to raise awareness of the risks of obesity, promote the value of healthy eating and explore the steps people can take through diet and exercise to prevent obesity.

‘Fit Food’ aimed to support children and their families to make healthier choices with food and eat more well-balanced meals.

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Walsall Council Creative Development Team worked in partnership with Walsall NHS Community Health – Health Promotion Team, Walsall Schools Catering Service, Walsall Council Sports and Leisure Services, Walsall Active Youth (WAY) and Walsall Healthy Schools.

One of the key ingredients was to educate in a language that would be understood, and to investigate reasons why children were not already making healthy choices.

The multi-media project was delivered in two local primary schools.

Through short listing and interview process Catcher Media Ltd was commissioned to engage the whole school community – children and their families, teachers, pastoral staff and school catering staff, in a fun, participatory, educational and creative project.

The ‘Fit Food’ project was delivered over two academic years 2006-2007 through a phased approach and used a broad range of creative approaches incorporating drama, animation, graphic design, visual art, research activities, interviews and music through a programme of facilitated workshops.

Phase 1

The project was introduced in a whole school assembly by a fictional character called ‘Alfie Eaton’. Alfie was introduced to the school as a celebrity chef who was famous for running a London based restaurant called ‘Nice Nosh’. The character used a range of stories and anecdotes to get the children interested in the project.

Participants initially took part in a ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ quiz facilitated by Walsall Council’s Sports and Leisure Physical Activity Advisors. The quiz provided the opportunity to gather base line data around participant’s current knowledge around the key topic areas to be explored.

Over the course of the spring and summer term children in years 4 & 5 worked with artists from Catcher Media to explore topics around a healthy lifestyle theme.

These included:

• 5 a day messages
• Balanced meals at school and at home
• Healthy Lunch boxes
• Healthy snacks
• Salt, sugar and fats
• Exercise and physical activity

Children worked with the school kitchen staff to be a ‘chef for the day’ creating a healthy menu which the children helped cook and serve to the whole school.

The catering staff also hosted tasting sessions for local parents to come and meet the catering staff, sample some school meals and ask any questions.

Phase 2

The focus of phase 2 was on supporting schools to embed the project further into the curriculum through developing links with the ICT and PSHE curriculum. Small groups of 8-12 pupils worked with Catcher Media to develop media and ICT skills to research, script, storyboard, direct, film and edit short adverts around 5 key messages.

Throughout the summer term a ‘Fit food challenge was delivered in each school which used the adverts created by the children to raise classroom discussions and kick start each week’s specific health challenge.

The weekly challenges focused on the following:

• Bring in and drink a bottle of water
• Do some daily exercise
• Eat an extra portion of fruit or vegetables
• Eat less crisps, chocolate, sweets or chips
• Eat breakfast

Children self evaluated how well they had achieved in each challenge with support from teachers. Teachers were provided with a fit food score chart to record children’s individual responses.

Teachers commented that children now show a greater understanding of the key themes and are actively talking to their parents about it.

The project directly engaged over 220 children and 200 people attended the final celebratory event.

The launch of the resource attracted representation from three quarters of invited primary schools in the borough.

The teaching resource has been made available to 90 schools in the borough endorsed by Walsall Healthy Schools Scheme.

500 additional promotional products have been produced and disseminated to project participants.

Schools have taken ownership of the project and continue to use both the resources and media and ICT approaches more within the PSHE curriculum.

“I have enjoyed doing the project because I leant things that I didn’t know about and it was fun… I have learnt more about exercise, healthy eating and 5 a day…being fit and eating healthy foods….eating a variety of foods is very good for you. It helped me think about what I am eating.”
Year 4 pupils Palfrey Junior School

“…Children are talking and thinking more about healthy eating – they often quote the ‘5-a-day’. They show a greater understanding of the need for exercise in their lives and also talk about their parents and what exercise they are taking. Our families are very close units as it will have a greater affect than on just Year 4 pupils.”
Palfrey YR 4 Teacher

“I have told my mom about it and she’s helping me by putting more vegetables in our meals.”
Participant

“The project has made a huge impact on many variables including: quality and range of learning, development of presentation skills, enhanced speaking and listening skills and developing ICT skills.”
Class teacher

“There was a great sense of achievement the children felt on viewing the DVD.”
Palfrey class teacher

The project was successful in ..”highlighting health issues for the children in a different way, a different ‘voice’ works wonders in getting them to engage.
Children are sharing ideas around the school and at home.”
Palfrey Yr4Teacher

“Catcher Media were very friendly and positive with the children. They created a sense of excitement which is always great at a school.”
Palfrey Yr 4Teacher

“Children enjoyed the filming process. In ICT we normally do something that has already been set up, this process was more organic and enabled a certain amount of freedom not normally experienced. This gave children something that they felt was truly theirs.”

“I never used to drink enough water ever, but now I have started to drink more now I’ve done the filming.”
Year 4 participant

“An unexpected outcome of the project is that staff are now eating more healthily, visitors to school are commenting on how good our school meals are.”
Palfrey Yr4 Teacher

“I knew people get ill from having lots of junk food and fatty foods so if we actually start to encourage people – and encourage people at an early age then maybe in the future we can all control our health better.”
Year 4 participant – Palfrey

“When we were out in the playground before we used to just sit down and watch everyone else play, now we play, run around and have races.”
Year 4 participant – Palfrey

“Before doing the animation project I used to have lots of fizzy pop, chocolates and crisps but now I only have a bit of fizzy pop and junk food and I do more exercise and have more fruit and veg.”
Year 4 participant – Palfrey

“It changed the way of my eating habits- now I eat more healthily.”
Year 5 pupil Delves Junior School

“The response from the children and parents has been very positive, they have really understood the message hopefully they will act on it!- it strengthens and reinforces important issues in school i.e. healthy eating and exercise.”
Palfrey Yr 4Teacher

The project… “Helped consolidate work we had been doing at school on healthy eating… and linked well with our science topic on healthy eating.”
Delves class teacher

“Our cook Sharon was completely involved and worked hard to make a success of each aspect of the project. She has continued to serve the menu that the children cooked – it’s very popular. On that day the food ran out!! Parents were a little harder to engage, but those that did comment, and taste the food, were very positive.”
Palfrey Yr 4Teacher

“There was a buzz created around issues of healthy eating and exercise with involvement and interest created around the DVD – parents, governors, staff and kitchen staff were really onboard with the project and talked a lot to me and others about the DVD. A huge hit and valuable teaching resource.”
Palfrey Yr 4Teacher

“This experience has been a once in a lifetime opportunity, I really enjoyed it… thank you for coming to our school and helping us learn all these things. I have really enjoyed it.”
Pupil Year 5 Delves Junior School

Phase 1 resulted in the production of a 40 minute child friendly key stage 2 DVD along with teacher’s lesson plans and children’s activity book. The DVD was launched at a teacher’s twilight event and distributed to all primary schools in the borough. Graphic Designer Innes Jones also worked with design group to develop a ‘fit food’ logo which was used as a brand on all publicity and was also used as a design for a fridge magnet which all pupils took home to help celebrate the project and it’s key messages to their families. Through consultation and design workshops with artist Innes Jones children designed a range of promotional ‘Fit Food’ products to further promote the projects messages throughout the school. This resulted in the production and distribution of ‘Fit Food’ stationery sets to all pupils. The adverts were uploaded onto each individual school website and each school was left with an ICT media resource with a selection of crib sheets which highlighted key teaching points from the project.

Downloadable teaching resources can be found on: www.fit-food.co.uk

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