Alison Swan Parente MBE - Founding the School of Artisan Food, at the age of 60

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders

Nottingham Business School’s Business Leaders’ Podcast

Episode 52

Alison Swan Parente MBE - Founding the School of Artisan Food, at the age of 60

Summary

Alison Swan Parente MBE is founder of the pioneering School of Artisan Food and the Welbeck Bakehouse.

She set them up as second career, sixteen years ago, when she was 60.

In Episode 52 of the Nottingham Business School’s Business Leaders’ Podcast, Alison talks to Visiting Honorary Professor Mike Sassi about the joys and challenges of her ‘new’ career.

She also enthuses about creating a new generation of butchers, bakers, brewers and cheese-makers.

Introduction

• Alison Swan Parente was born in Sussex, just after the Second World War.

• She enjoyed a 35-year career as a child psychotherapist, in Britain and America.

• When she retired in 2007, at the age of 60, she set up artisan bakery The Welbeck Bakehouse, on the Welbeck Estate in north Nottinghamshire.

• Soon after, she founded The School of Artisan Food.

• Sixteen years on, the school has won industry awards and built a national reputation for its hands-on courses and world class tutors.

• It teaches traditional skills including bread-baking, cheese-making, brewing and butchery. Its courses focus on healthy and sustainable food.

• In recent years, the school has teamed up with Nottingham Trent University to deliver degree courses in artisan food production.

• Alison was an expert judge on the BBC’s Top of the Shop show, with restaurateurs Tom Kerridge and Nisha Katona.

• In 2017 she was awarded an MBE, for services to education and charity

Key takeaways

Alison Swan Parente told Mike Sassi…

…she was interested in food and cooking from an early age:

“My biggest influence was living in a communal household, in America in the 1970s, where the men cooked. I’d never seen that before. They’d learned [cooking] for political reasons. The women were fed up with cooking.”

…one aim of the School of Artisan Food is to provide routes into employment for young people:

“If you are thinking about how to make young people resilient, one thing you can do is help them to be creative - another is to give them a job.”

…when artisan food producers enthuse about what they do, that’s good marketing:

"Marketing is essential for any business. But the best marketing is authentic marketing."

…it is important for leaders to be well-informed:

“Leadership involves hanging around discreetly in the shadows of your institution, hearing about the things that are going on.”

…it’s also important for leaders not to become micro-managers:

“You have to know what’s going on – but you also have to trust the people you employ.”

And Alison’s advice for leaders and would-be leaders?

“You have to listen to people all the time. Do more listening than talking!”

Related links

• More about Alison Swan Parente MBE

• Alison’s LinkedIn profile is here

• Alison is trustee and founder of the School of Artisan Food

• Alison Swan Parente presented the BBC’s Top of the Shop

If you enjoyed this episode NBS Business Leaders’ Podcast with Alison Swan Parente, listen to previous shows with…

• The Chair of the English Football Association Debbie Hewitt

• Paralympic gold medallist Charlotte Henshaw

• The CEO of Capital One UK Lucy Marie Hagues