Pheasant Friday
Empowering children's understanding of nutrition through local, seasonal and nutritionally dense game bird meat.
"Exmoor Game School delivered over 1,000 hands-on wild meat experiences to children across Exmoor and the surrounding areas last year."
Darren Sherwood, Founder of Exmoor Game School
Objectives of Pheasant Fridays
- Normalise Real Food: Extend the classroom experience into the home to normalise game as an everyday food source within local families.
- Encourage Hands-on Learning: Provide children and their parents with practical opportunities to prepare and cook locally sourced game birds.
- Build Confidence and Competence: Inspire confidence in children by empowering them to complete a meaningful task - preparing food for their family.
- Promote Critical Thinking: Get children thinking critically about food production, consumption, and the ethical issues surrounding farming and game shooting.
- Create Sustainable Community Links: Establish lasting relationships between local schools and shooting estates, fostering a self-sustaining model for the project's future.
Shooting Estates can Enhance School Calendars with Unforgettable Experiences for Students!
By pairing local schools with local shoots, we aim to transform the way children perceive, cook, and enjoy regional game.
A Growing Legacy
The Pheasant Friday session is designed to become a seasonal highlight in the school calendar. Rather than a one-off event, the project is built to expand year-on-year, weaving sustainable food education into the fabric of the community:
- Year 1: 50 children participate in their first hands-on session.
- Year 2: A new intake of 50 children joins the project, while the previous year’s group takes birds home for the weekend.
- Year 4 & Beyond: With 50 children in the session and 150+ children taking birds home to their families, the project reaches a tipping point of local impact.
Why It Matters
This initiative is about more than just one meal; it’s about providing first-hand lived experience of local, seasonal food. By bringing game into the domestic kitchen, we:
- Normalise real food and scratch cooking in the home.
- Promote game as an accessible, healthy meat for everyone.
- Develop transferable skills that children can apply to other fresh ingredients throughout their lives.
How You Can Help
To make this happen, we invite local estates to sponsor a school through a Community Investment of £200.
This foundational support covers the essential costs of the session, but we welcome any additional investment. Further funding allows us to expand our reach, provide better resources for the children, and ensure that every bird makes it from the moor to the dinner table.
Would you Like To Participate?
If you're connected to schools or shoots and you'd like to participate in this project, please get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.
