Campaigners Reimagine Iconic Political Ad in Push to Expand Free School Meals

The #FeedtheFuture campaign has reworked one of the most iconic political slogans in history as part of a new campaign urging MPs to widen access to Free School Meals.

The Food Foundation’s Young Food Ambassadors took the campaign to Westminster yesterday, reworking one of the most iconic political slogans in history to highlight the vast number of children missing out and target politicians as they begin to plan their election manifesto commitments.

The creative represents the ‘queue’ of 900,000 children in poverty being denied Free School Meals. If this were a real queue of children, it would stretch 342 miles – the equivalent distance from London to Edinburgh.

This astonishing figure helped inspire the campaign concept, which was developed by creative agency Weber Shandwick, who has offered pro bono support to the Food Foundation on a variety of projects over the last two years to campaign for changes to food policy and ensure access to healthy and sustainable diets for all.

With election manifestos being written in the coming weeks and months, the campaigners are calling on politicians to extend access to Free School Meals to all school children, with the first step being to immediately target children from families receiving Universal Credit.

Whilst all London primary school children are now eligible for a Free School Meal as of this September for one year through emergency funding provided by the London Mayor Sadiq Khan[1], outside of London, only children from households with an income below £7,400 a year (after tax, before benefits) are eligible; a threshold that has not increased since 2018. This is despite inflation reaching an all-time high in the last twelve months and the most deprived families continuing to feel the impact of the cost-of-living crisis most acutely.

The Food Foundation has also garnered the support of celebrity chefs Melissa Hemsley and Tom Kerridge, who are long term supporters of the Food Foundation and the Young Food Ambassador’s campaigning.

Zoe McIntyre, Advocacy Manager on Children’s Food, The Food Foundation said: “This is an incredibly important issue so we wanted to make as much noise as possible around our new campaign in order to grab people’s attention.

“We welcome the Mayor of London’s roll out of Free School Meals to primary school children in London for the next year as a measure to help families cope with the soaring cost of living. However, we mustn’t forget the hundreds of thousands of children outside the capital who are living below the poverty line but don’t qualify.

“I sincerely hope that politicians will listen to our calls for action and that our campaign can have a lasting and positive impact on young people all over the country.”

Helen Bennett, UK CEO of Weber Shandwick, said: “We are living through volatile times, and the most vulnerable members of our society are suffering disproportionately. Food insecurity has no place in 21st century Britain - we feel privileged to support the #FeedtheFuture campaign to expand eligibility of free school meals.

“’Kids Aren’t Eating’ is a powerful illustration of the reality that so many are facing. We hope it will have a lasting impact on policymakers who can put an end to the current postcode lottery.”