Trinity students pilot ‘social supermarket’ initiative to tackle cost of living

“Cost of living, food support, and accommodation are the existential issues right now; they’re the issues I have to deal with the most day-to-day,” says Lorenzo Cheasty, Welfare and Equality Officer of the Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union.

Originally, to try to tackle this, Cheasty started raising money for the college’s food bank. But he describes it as “quite a stigmatising initiative”.

“It was basically hidden, put in a dark corner of Goldsmith Hall. It wasn’t really used much by students, because it was quite hidden away, shameful.”

While researching alternative ways to address the issue of food insecurity for students, Cheasty was reached out to by Michelle Share, an assistant professor in education at the college, who told him about the ‘social supermarket’ initiative that has taken place in France and Belgium.

“It redistributed surplus food directly to students for free or for a very low cost, and that was really interesting,” he says. “So I did more research, created proposals to share with the college, identified a space which was the Hamilton Building.”

An empty space had been left by a commercial cafe run by Aramark, which students boycotted due to the company’s involvement with the direct provision system. Cheasty also visited the University of Galway Student Pantry for inspiration, which provides surplus food from local supermarkets to students.

The ideas culminated in the creation of Sólás Social, which brings together a social supermarket, an artistic communal space and sustainability initiative. The social supermarket element of the idea was launched this month, and food is provided to the space through Food Cloud, a non-profit organisation which connects surplus food from supermarkets with charities and community groups.

“The space is kind of surreal”, Cheasty says. “When you walk into the space, it’s completely different than what the Goldsmith Hall Food Bank would be, because it’s not a food bank and it’s not a student pantry. It’s something different.”

He describes the space as one that “doesn’t have shame attached to it, and this kind of stigma. People who come in here are supported for being themselves and for wanting to use the space.”

Cheasty emphasises that the initiative follows a “participatory design” in which students have a say in how it operates. “We had a feedback form in the space where we asked students to submit whatever you want in here. What do you want to create? What projects do you want to see happen? What do you want the space to become? And we had a few students say, ‘we want more microwaves in the space’.”

The following day, three microwaves were added.

He notes that the space can be used by anyone, with the idea being not to create a separate welfare space for students financially struggling. “Food is really there for everyone,” he says. “For people who may not have lunch that day, for people who just want a box of chocolates to snack on with their friends.”

He adds that it’s there “of course, especially for students who need that extra bit of financial support, because the cost of living in Dublin has exacerbated to the point where a lot of students are really struggling financially”.

Reflecting on the cost of living for students, he says that in his “own background as a Trinity Access Programme student, when I came into Trinity initially, both myself and the people around me were struggling financially. I came into college, and I entered into a community full of students who faced barriers to education, financial barriers that made daily life a lot more difficult. Affording housing, affording basic costs like groceries, heating, electricity.”

Cheasty says the initiative aims to “benefit students, rather than shaming them for something that’s not their fault”.

The initiative’s name comes from the Irish for solace or comfort.

Beyond the social supermarket, the space is also an artistic and communal space which is open for students to decide how they use it. “A large part of our idea behind Sólás is that we want to break down barriers and arbitrary bureaucracy that stands between students, especially students from underrepresented communities, and participation in campus life,” Cheasty says.

“We want to create a space where there are few barriers for a student to have an idea and then implement it in the space. If someone wants to run, like, a soup night at half eight, because they’re on placement all day and societies don’t run late night events and don’t run events on the weekend … to give students a bit of flexibility to create a space for themselves and other people who are like them and not like them.”

To encourage students to become involved in shaping the space, a poster campaign was organised, with those chosen being paid for their poster to be displayed around campus. “Students made these incredible posters because they had the freedom and agency to do it, and they had the material support. I think that’s the wider idea behind Sólás, that we’re not imparting our vision and our idea of what student space should be, what material support should be, what students should have and need, because students know much better than anyone else what they need in their lives.”

The initiative is in the pilot stage, with Cheasty noting that they want to see how students will use the space, and allow it to change in response to their feedback. They are in the process of applying for additional funding to “realise the aims, ambitions and ideas behind Sólás”.