The Scottish Alliance for Food (SCAF) addresses food as a societal grand challenge that simultaneously impacts and unites us all. Food is central to culture, heritage, and society.  

For World Food Day 2025, SCAF is launching its annual competition, celebrating food preparation, heritage and storytelling. We invite people across Scotland to share a recipe close to their heart and a short story highlighting how the dish features in their identity, family heritage, culture, or history.

Selected entries will feature in a “Recipes & Stories” collection to celebrate the diversity of food, and how it connects people across Scotland. Prizes will be available for the best submissions. 

To take part, submit the following three elements: 

  1. A recipe of personal significance. It could be a favourite recipe, a recipe passed down through generations, or a dish that evokes fond memories 
  2. A short story based on why this recipe is significant to you (between 50 and 300 words) 
  3. An accompanying visualisation: a drawing, photograph, or a video (max 2 minutes). 

Criteria for selection and prizes  

The submission should be complete and meet all criteria to feature in the “recipes and stories” collection. 

A panel of members of the Scottish Alliance for Food will award prizes. Submissions will be judged under three age categories (under 12s, 12-18, and over 18) for storytelling, presentation, creativity, and overall impact and impression.   

First (£100), second (£50) and third (£20) prizes will be selected for each age category.

Entry and Eligibility  

To enter, you must be a person living in Scotland.  

Using the above brief, submit a recipe along with an original story and visualisation in the form of a drawing, photograph or video (max 2 minutes) to share your connection with food. If your photograph or video includes people, they should either not be identifiable or your submission should include express consent by the identifiable person for your content to be shared on our website. Submissions that include writing/video/images/audio sourced from the internet must only do so when the reuse of these items is permitted. Generative AI to create submissions is authorised as long as it is declared and meets the requirements above.  

By submitting an entry, you agree that your entry may be used by SCAF in whole or edited form under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. All selected and bona fide submissions will be integrated into our SCAF showcase and possibly used in reports, collections, and further disseminations across internal and external channels to capture the mission and aims of the alliance. 

How to submit

1) Download and fill in the template for your recipe and short story: SCAF Competition 2025 - recipe & story submission template

2) Complete the entry form and submit your recipe and story as an editable document along with an image (.tif, .png, .jpg, .jpeg) or video (.mp4) via the link below.

The submission deadline is Friday, 16th January 2026, 5pm. We welcome multiple entries from interested parties, between 16th October 2025 and 16th January 2026. However, any given participant may only receive a maximum of one prize.

For any questions, contact scaf@glasgow.ac.uk.

Submit your competition entry

 

First published: 15 October 2024

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