Catching the imagination of the next generation
As a college lecturer, I have been heavily involved over the last two years in one of the greatest opportunities we have for helping to ease the skills shortage, and for catching the imagination of the future generation of chefs. FutureChef is a competition run by Springboard and aimed at 14- to 16-year-old school pupils.
I mentored Laura Jenkins last year in the competition. Ralph Pitts, the South Wales representative for Springboard, asked me if I could visit local schools to see if any pupils would be interested in the competition. I had a very poor response, except for Sandfields Comprehensive, where I was asked to demonstrate a few dishes and talk about the competition. When I arrived, not one out of a class of 35 children wanted to enter. But after only an hour of demonstration and encouragement, all 35 children wanted to compete. We put all the names into my chef's hat and drew out four names. They came back to the college and I worked with them over two weeks, and then we held a competition between them to pick a winner for the school heats.
Laura won the school area heat, the regional heat, and the Welsh final to become FutureChef of Wales, and was second overall in the grand final out of nearly 4,000 entrants nationwide.
Working with Ralph this year, we have gone one step better. In June, with Laura's help, I demonstrated to eight home economics teachers who were really interested in getting involved with this year's competition. Next month I and other lecturers from the college will be visiting local schools to promote the competition. Next month we're holding a masterclass with local members of the Craft Guild of Chefs to show competition skills to the children who will compete in the first round of the competition, to be held at the college in November.
Fantastic! We're not only getting children involved in a tremendous competition, and possibly into the hospitality trade in the future but, as a college, we're also forging stronger links with chefs out in the industry.
With a little more encouragement from industry and colleges, we might also get a lot more interest from school-leavers. If every chef visited their local school for one hour, say, every year, to talk and encourage the next generation of school-leavers, just think of the impact it would have on our industry in the future.
Mark Allison is chef/lecturer at Neath Port Talbot College