Luminary Bakery: Care in the recipe
Across from the bustling Stables Market, Luminary Bakery is a rare space of calm and tranquility on Chalk Farm Road. While its shop front turns heads with its decadent array of cakes and pastries, the real work is done behind the scenes.
Through a large window in the back of the cafe, customers can watch the bakers at work, precisely measuring ingredients, kneading dough and decorating exquisite cakes. The shop front itself is a showcase for the charity side of Luminary, which is designed to help women who have experienced multiple disadvantages and gender-based violence.
“We use the cafes and the bakeries to show our products to the world,” the Camden store manager Annie Godsman, tells us “We use baking as a tool to provide confidence, to help with life skills, to empower women to find a path to employment and entrepreneurship”. As part of their program Luminary offers counseling as well as practical training, but in many ways baking itself is part of the therapy. “We put patience in the recipe, it’s about taking a step back, surrendering to the recipe,” Annie says.
“We use baking as a tool to provide confidence, to help with life skills, to empower women to find a path to employment and entrepreneurship.”
Annie Godsman, Luminary Bakery Camden store manager
In this sense, Luminary’s model is an overlapping network of interconnected support structures. Training in baking acts as a kind of therapy, while the baked goods support the shop front. The shop front itself then supports the training and simultaneously acts as a means of social integration for the women who come through the program. “On our Camden site, where we have the training room when women come to us for work experience, it’s the same building, the same faces, it feels like a gentle progression.” One Luminary graduate, Halimot, who has since opened her own business told us “Luminary gave me a second chance, most people only get one, thanks to them I got a second”.
