Our Story

Rooted in Hull exists in a place where it should not. Hundreds of years of industrial history including shipping, timber and fishing, left our little piece of Hull derelict and without purpose. The fallout from the ending of such a vibrant industrial city stretches far and wide across time, so much so, that many of us still find ourselves struggling to make ends meet, from one month to the next in these modern times. These are the pressures under which our community can struggle. Some people are lucky enough to be surrounded by those family and friends who can support them, whilst there are many in our community who are feeling an increased sense of social isolation.

Our vision for Rooted in Hull was to create a safe space in the heart of the city, that allowed people to come together and connect. A good thing to connect us, is food. We have successfully created a farm where a farm has no real right to exist. There are problems with an urban farm that we might not face if we were in a more traditionally rural setting, including lack of space and the fact that we do not own the land we are using. We needed passion, initiative, determination and innovation.

Our site makes use of shipping containers, organised into a circle, all with an individual and unique function and design. The red container being the most innovative, combining the functions of a live performance venue, and an art gallery. The Rooted Farm site is also available to host your event, taking advantage of our now famous, freshly cooked pizza, and BBC approved, home grown, home made soups!

Other innovative containers in the circle house a bakery, the kitchen, a shop and our office, the site has full free Wi-Fi coverage.

All the growing that we do takes place in raised planters, that we build ourselves, demonstrating the ability for us all to try and grow some foods in our own spaces at home, wherever you might live. The whole site layout is depicted in our Rooted in Hull logo, representing the red container and the planters, spreading out from our central roots in Hull, and beyond into our community.

We are succeeding in a place where a farm should not work…and yet, we do work. We try to grow food in ways that are innovative because of our circumstances, because of our physical location.

We hope, that by continuing to exist, we can demonstrate the ability for our community to strive through adversity. By sharing knowledge and learning together about sustainability, we hope to inspire people in the community to come and learn with us, help us to grow, and perhaps go home and grow something for themselves.

Each of our containers has a solar panel allowing us to generate our own electricity. In actual fact, we are connected to the national grid, and the energy that we generate through our panels is fed back, as we strive to maintain our zero carbon footprint.