A Brief Histroy

The founding members of Social Pickle met in 2020 as volunteers of the Foodhall project, a community hub and social eating space that operated in Sheffield. We often found ourselves creatively dealing with the surplus of the project’s ingredients - which were already donated and acquired as surplus! Witnessing food insecurity in the city, we wanted to put passions for food preservation into action.

Our very first project worked with urban apple gluts, both foraged and donated from the city’s trees. We created a raw apple cider vinegar and bottled it up into a pay-what-you-can product for market, that could be used to communicate our ideas and get to know the food systems we existed within. 

From there we set up regular Glut Clubs, collaborated with other organisations and events, and slowly consolidated Sheffield’s interest in food preservation into an annual Pickle Fest that grew exponentially each year, hosting community judged competitions, workshops, music and talks.

When we were operating from Foodhall, Social Pickle had a network of volunteers who tended to the active fermentation vessels in our “laboratory”, welcomed new members into the wider community, and fed in ideas and shared our accumulated knowledge with the public. 

Social Pickle incorporated as a CIC in early 2024, and has had a change up in core members and directors over the years with people moving on to other projects, having babies, moving to other parts of the country, etc. But activity still continues to bubble away and while we currently don’t have a physical base in the city, we hope to be installed in a kitchen space once again before too long.