Connecting Communities with Foodie Book Club CIC is a book club with a difference.
We’re a not-for-profit trying to do some good in a crazy world.
Our goals are simple: support inclusion and stop isolation before it starts.
At Foodie Book Club, we look after the emotional well-being of as many people as we can reach.
Who We Are
Foodie Book Club CIC is a community interest company that raises money and organises community food-related projects, using fiction books as a creative starting point for connection and conversation.
We bring people together through a shared love of stories and food, believing that both have the power to inspire empathy, wellbeing, and community action.
Food is more than nourishment – it is culture, memory and care, and fiction allows us to explore these themes imaginatively and emotionally.
By combining fiction reading with food-focused community projects, we create welcoming spaces where people feel valued, inspired, and supported.
All funds we raise are reinvested into community food initiatives that support wellbeing, inclusion, and local resilience.
Our work is run by volunteers and Foodie Book Club members, ensuring that projects remain community-led, collaborative, and responsive to local needs.
How It All Started
Born during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Foodie Book Club began as an online book club created to support those feeling isolated during uncertain times. What started as a virtual space for connection has since grown into a vibrant book club that brings community members together through shared stories, conversation, and a love of food.
Purpose
As a Community Interest Company (CIC), our purpose is social impact. Everything we do is designed to benefit the community.
Organising Community Food Projects
We design and deliver projects that use food as a tool for connection and care.
These projects are shaped by local needs and often involve collaboration with community members, volunteers, and partner organisations.
Raising Funds for Community Food Projects
Foodie Book Club CIC actively raises money through events, partnerships, and activities.
Inclusive Community Spaces
We create safe, friendly, and accessible spaces where everyone is welcome.
Our groups are designed to reduce isolation, build confidence, and foster genuine connections, particularly for people who may feel excluded from traditional social or cultural activities.
These funds directly support community food-related projects such as shared community meals, food education, accessible cooking sessions, and initiatives that improve access to good food—while encouraging connection, collaboration, and the building of strong, supportive communities around food.
Some of Our Ongoing Projects
Since becoming a CIC in 2021, Foodie Book Club CIC has been proud to support our community in a variety of ways:
Community Lunches
Bringing people together to reduce isolation and encourage meaningful connections that continue beyond the table.
Annual Children’s Gift Tree
A Christmas initiative collecting gifts for children in the community who may benefit during the festive season.
Pantry-Led Cooking Lessons
Practical cooking sessions using affordable ingredients, supporting those facing food poverty and rising energy costs.
Recipe Development & Free Ingredients
Creating cost-effective pantry-based recipes and providing free ingredients to help community members cook nutritious meals at home.
Many more community projects are planned for the future as we continue to grow and support those around us.
Monthly Foodie Book Club Meet-Ups
Foodie Book Club CIC meets on the last Monday evening of each month. These regular gatherings are a chance to talk about that month’s fiction book and to discuss our future and ongoing community food projects.
Meetings are relaxed, friendly, and participatory. Alongside book discussion, members help shape ideas, plan activities, and contribute to decisions about how funds are raised and which community projects we take forward.
We warmly welcome anyone who wants to join our book club and support our plans, whether you are passionate about reading, food, community action, or simply meeting new people.
Find Out More
If you’re interested in finding out more about Foodie Book Club CIC, in joining our monthly book club meetings or want to hear more about our community food related projects, contact us and say hello.
Email: Fbc.Enquiries@outlook.com
Isolation and the Work We Do
Isolation is a growing problem everywhere in the UK, and it’s only getting worse. That’s why right here in County Durham, Foodie Book Club CIC is connecting communities by raising funds and running projects that bring people together.
Read on for something to think about:
The Invisible Crisis: Mapping Social Isolation in County Durham
There is a quiet, heavy crisis creeping through the villages, market towns, and old mining communities of County Durham.
While we are dead famous for our gorgeous dales, massive heritage, and proper close-knit community spirit, a shadow has been growing over the area—the sheer weight of chronic social isolation. It is an issue that completely ignores your postcode, your background, or your age. Far too many people in our area are spending consecutive days, weeks, or even months without a single meaningful conversation with another human being.
The data from Durham Insight shows the true, shocking scale of this invisible epidemic.
In County Durham alone, around 22,000 adults aged 18 to 64 are classified as socially isolated.
When you look at older residents aged 65 and over, roughly 19,000 individuals experience persistent loneliness, with more than 10,000 describing that isolation as intense and severe. These aren't just dry figures on a council health spreadsheet; they represent thousands of real people locked behind closed doors, completely cut off from the vibrant life of our county.
The Emotional Impact: A Burden Borne by All Ages
The emotional toll of this level of isolation is devastating, affecting every single demographic in unique but equally painful ways.
There is a common misconception that loneliness is solely an issue for the elderly. While older people are undeniably vulnerable—often cut off by the loss of a partner, declining physical health, or the total vanishing act of local transport links—younger generations are suffering just as acutely.
For young adults and new parents in the region, the emotional fallout often manifests as extreme anxiety, depression, and a crushing sense of self-doubt. In our increasingly digital world, it is terrifyingly easy to be constantly connected online while remaining completely isolated in real life.
Teenagers and young professionals frequently report feeling invisible, trapped in single-person households or facing rural isolation without the money or means to travel and socialise.
For the older generation, the psychological impact is frequently compounded by physical deterioration.
Public health studies continuously link long-term isolation to elevated rates of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and clinical depression. When you feel like the world has entirely forgotten you, the motivation to cook proper meals, go for walks, or look after your basic health slowly slips away. The emotional weight builds up until it becomes an inescapable cycle: the longer someone is isolated, the more terrifying it becomes to step back out and try to connect with the local community.
Enter Foodie Book Club CIC: Nourishing Body and Soul
This is exactly where Foodie Book Club CIC steps in to smash the cycle.
We are a Community Interest Company fundamentally built on an incredibly simple, age-old truth: nothing brings people together quite like a good book and a proper, hearty meal.
We use the universal joy of sharing food and stories as a natural bridge to guide people safely out of isolation and back into a warm, welcoming social circle.
At our core, we are a real, functioning book club that meets up on the last Monday of each month from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. Every meeting is a proper social event where we get together to share food and chat about that month's chosen book.
We split the evening right down the middle to keep things focused: the first half of the meeting is where our members chat about the book, and the second half is where we plan, brainstorm, and discuss our current and upcoming community projects.
We actively listen, we share laughs, and most importantly, we make sure that every single person who walks through our doors knows they are a valued part of our local community.
Why We Urgently Need Community-Minded Volunteers
As the demand for our support grows across the county, our small team needs to expand. We are actively searching for passionate, community-minded volunteers to join us on the ground and help keep our vital projects running.
Right now, our most critical initiative is the rollout of free community lunches for those in the community who are isolated. We want to establish regular, weekly hubs where anyone facing loneliness can come along, sit down at a shared table, and enjoy a nourishing, hot meal entirely free of charge. But to make these community lunches a permanent reality, we need a reliable army of local volunteers to help with:
Kitchen & Cooking Support: Helping to prep, cook, and serve up comforting, home-style dishes.
Hosting & Companionship: Sitting down at the tables, chatting with our guests, and ensuring that no one is left sitting alone.
Transport & Logistics: Helping to pick up and drive isolated individuals who otherwise wouldn’t be able to leave their houses due to poor public transport.
If you have a few spare hours a week and want to see the direct, immediate impact of your kindness, volunteering with us is a brilliant way to give back. You don’t need any professional qualifications or expert skills—just a warm smile, a friendly ear, and a genuine desire to make County Durham a less lonely place.
The Search for a Low-Cost Permanent Venue
While our passion is boundless, our physical infrastructure is currently our biggest hurdle. To truly anchor our projects and scale up our free community lunches, Foodie Book Club CIC is actively searching for a low-cost, permanent venue within the county.
Relying on temporary room hires and shifting schedules makes it incredibly difficult for isolated individuals to build a predictable, reassuring routine.
We urgently need a dedicated bricks-and-mortar space to call home—a place where we can set up a permanent kitchen, stack bookshelves, and keep our doors open throughout the week as a reliable sanctuary for anyone needing company.
We are appealing to local councils, private landlords, businesses, or community trusts who might have an underutilised building, a vacant storefront, or a disused community space that they would be willing to lease to us at a highly affordable, community-focused rate.
Having a permanent base would completely transform our operational capabilities, allowing us to expand our kitchen operations, host more regular meetups, and provide a lasting foundation to tackle the region's isolation crisis head-on.
Let’s Rebuild Our Connections Together
Social isolation is a heavy, suffocating burden, but it is not an unsolvable problem. By combining the simple comfort of regular community lunches with the dedicated energy of local volunteers and a stable place to meet, we can ensure that no one in County Durham is left to suffer in silence.
If you are interested in getting involved, we would love to hear from you:
Do you know of a space? Get in touch if you have any leads on a potential permanent venue for us.
Do you know someone who needs us? Tell us how we can best welcome them to our next free community lunch or get them involved in our monthly book club meetings.
Let’s pull together and make sure our communities remain as warm, supportive, and deeply connected as they deserve to be.
Contact: fbc.enquiries@outlook.com
