Access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food is vital for good physical and mental wellbeing. Despite this, many minority families in Scotland face structural barriers and find their voices are missing from health and food policy discussions.

Over the next year, the Unity for integration Project will engage with local families through focus groups and surveys to understand the barriers they face in making healthy food choices, such as cost, availability, and cultural fit.

The researchers hope the findings will propose solutions shaped directly by those most affected, as the participants will co-design actions to improve access, such as community cooking sessions, and local food-growing opportunities.

By centring lived experience, this project aims to improve health, strengthen community integration, and provide evidence for more inclusive food policies that reflect the realities of diverse communities in Scotland.

The project will map the use of open-pollinated seed within the local food system, gather stories and traditional knowledge related to food growing in the region, and run a pilot Seed Circle that supports people in growing, saving, and sharing locally adapted food seeds. Using participatory research methods, the project will record the practical, cultural and environmental benefits of food seed saving, identify the barriers faced by new community food growers and assess how food seed diversity can be strengthened in Lochaber.

By working with Scottish seed initiatives and Seed Sovereignty Scotland, the project will generate new knowledge, practical resources and a tested model that can be expanded locally or adapted by other communities seeking to build resilient food systems.