The Arundel Food Festival is only in its second year, but already it has the feel of a much more mature event. Starting today and spanning nine days, Arundel will be filled with imaginative food-related happenings, with a strong focus on reconnecting people with landscape and farming.

Mike Imms is the coordinator of the festival. He says: “When you say the phrase ‘food festival’ people have an idea of a glorified street market, and this unquestionably isn’t that. It’s all sorts of things food-related that allow people to improve their enjoyment of food in Arundel. We’ve asked a lot of restaurants to take part in producing festival dishes with an emphasis on seasonal and local produce, creating dishes which celebrate produce from Arundel rather than anywhere else.”

Alongside the many eating experiences – which include a collaborative “processional” dinner, where diners eat their starter in one restaurant, main in another and dessert in a third – festival goers will have the opportunity to attend farm open days, a food and farming walk led by a South Downs National Park ranger, a Sussex picnic lunch, and take part in a foraging morning, finding wild food in natural settings and making lunch with it after.

Arundel’s green society, Agenda 21, is also heavily involved with promoting food sustainability throughout the programme, starting with the launch of an orchard mapping project on the first day and continuing the theme with apple juicing using a press from Arundel Castle. Together with Better Tomorrows, the CIC behind the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign, they are also running stalls showing people how to be imaginative with left-overs.

Mike says: “A key ethos of the food festival is celebrating food, farming and producers in the Arundel area. It’s very consistent with Agenda 21’s issues. In the past two years they have been focusing on food as something they can really do something about.

If you think about a lot of the environment-related issues they really aren’t in our influence, but the food we eat, avoiding waste, avoiding food miles, is something everybody can do.”

But perhaps the most important aspect of the food festival is the way it opens dialogue across the whole community. Organisers have sought out food-based connections and asked everyone in the town to get involved, regardless of industry or background, with the aim of bringing them together – including those who would normally be competitors.

Mike says: “It’s about collaborating across the town for the benefit of everyone, and once you start finding connections through food, the results really are extraordinary. You just have to get people to think a little.

“If you say to art galleries ‘What have you got with food?’ they can find a lot of food-related pictures. One man carves walking sticks and remembered he made some with fruit on the handles. Last year Cancer Research put on a big display of cookery books.

“If you start to think in that way and have those conversations with people and various community groups, then you can start to involve everybody.”

* The Arundel Food Festival runs from October 5 to October 23. Visit www.arundelfoodfestival.org.uk