User:Graeme Kidd

I live and work in Ludlow, Shropshire, England. I earn a living through writing and editing, and spend a great deal of my spare time on projects that include the Ludlow Marches Festival of Food and Drink, Cittaslow, Slow Food and Ludlow Town Council. In May 2007 my fourth consecututive term as Mayor of Ludlow comes to an end.

Ludlow Food Festival is very sad to announce the sudden death of one of its founders, Graeme Kidd, on Sunday 31st May.

Graeme was an unforgettable character with many talents. He was one of the people who started Ludlow Marches Food and Drink Festival, the first successful food festival in Britain, in 1995, and he remained a director of it until very recently. The festival’s huge growth, success and international reputation was helped very considerably by Graeme's publicity, writing and PR skills. Most recently, the Food Festival’s new Spring Event was in large part due to Graeme's inspiration (and his love of beer, bread and sausages).

In 2002 he was one of the founding members of the Ludlow Marches Slow Food convivium and had been an active member of its committee ever since, helping to run events and passionately promoting Slow Food's message and beliefs, not just locally but further afield.

In 2005 he single-handedly master-minded and ran a campaign to raise the necessary funds to set up the new Slow Food UK office in Ludlow, and secured firm commitments to deliver the equivalent of around £90,000 over a three-year period, from regional and local government sources and from local voluntary and community organisations. Without this achievement Slow Food UK would not have got off the ground as a national association, and Graeme continued to support Slow Food practically in many ways, recently making a powerful speech at Slow Food UK meeting in which he expressed his views about the way forward for the movement in the UK.

Graeme was deeply involved with the development of the Cittaslow movement in the United Kingdom, helping Ludlow to become the first Cittaslow town in Britain. As Cittaslow UK's first president, he became the focal point for the large numbers of enquiries received from towns not just in the UK, but also from English-speaking countries around the world, and tirelessly followed up the interest shown.

As well as interest from other towns, countless postgraduate students, university academics and others came from all over the world to Ludlow for research purposes, and to investigate the economic implications of Ludlow’s food reputation. They were warmly welcomed and greeted by Graeme who would give each of them a significant amount of his time. The nine or ten Cittaslow towns that now exist in the UK – making it the largest Cittaslow network outside Italy – can all bear testament to Graeme’s influence and inspirational guidance.

Graeme was an elected member of Ludlow Town Council, and served as Mayor of Ludlow for four successive years. During that period he had the opportunity, which he used to the utmost, to implement many positive changes and to increase Ludlow’s reputation for being a role model for Slow values, for really good food and drink, and above all for Ludlow to welcome all its many and varied visitors.

All of Graeme's many voluntary activities took up a huge portion of his life, but they were done without financial reward and without any particular desire for fame or glory. He was a great ambassador for Ludlow, for small food and drink producers and suppliers, for diversity, and for the Slow values that he himself embodied so well. We are finding it difficult to understand that he is no longer with us, and he leaves Sally, his wife, and their children Warwick and Alasdair, and innumerable friends feeling totally devastated.

The funeral will took place on Tuesday 16th June at St Laurence's Church, Ludlow