New Lottery funding to build on and expand community cooking skills across Manchester

The Vegetarian Society is pleased to announce further National Lottery funding to enable us to continue our work on spreading vegetarian cooking skills across the Greater Manchester area.

Building on our previous work, we will be bringing cookery courses to areas and people that need them most, allowing people who might not usually be able to attend one of our COOK! classes the chance to learn vegetarian and vegan cooking skills. 
 
We believe that everyone deserves the chance to learn essential cooking skills. Being able to make your own delicious and nutritious meals from scratch isn’t always available to people from underserved communities, however. Our courses aim to address a range of the issues that might prevent people being able to frequently cook from scratch.  

National Lottery funding enables us to provide accessible, comprehensive veggie cooking courses in various locations across Manchester and the surrounding area.  
This builds on our previous courses – where people were  provided free travel, childcare in one venue, take-home ingredients, and a set of utensils at the end of the course. Provided by our skilled instructors at COOK!, we want our courses to be genuinely life changing, and we believe that this funding will enable us to do that.  
 
Last year, we found that:  

• Daily cooking from scratch increased from 32% to 80%. 

• Confidence using fresh ingredients rose, with many describing themselves as “proud” and “motivated.” 

• Fruit and veg consumption increased, and participants became more open to trying new plant-based meals. 

• New friendships formed, with group chats, photo sharing and food stories continuing beyond the course. 

• Tutors observed a shift in how participants felt about cooking — from stress and anxiety to pride, enjoyment and self-belief. 

Source: https://static.vegsoc.org/app/uploads/2025/09/Community-Cooking-Classes-Manchester-TNL-Awards-for-All-Report.pdf 
 

We’ll be talking more about our cooking skills courses on the website and across social media in the coming months. If you, or someone you know might benefit from attending a course, let us know at hello@vegsoc.org, or on social media.