Draft:Erik Talkin

Erik Talkin

Erik Andreas Philipsen Talkin is the CEO of Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, a Feeding America food bank located in California, United States and also a children’s author.

Early Life and Education

He was born Sept 12th 1961 on the US Navy Submarine Base in New London, CT. In 1966, his family moved to London, England, when his father, a US Naval Intelligence officer, was posted there and subsequently retired.

He attended the St. Christopher’s School, Wembley and then the John Lyon School in Harrow, winning a number of prizes for literature, before attending University College London from 1981-84, where he received a BA in English Literature. He subsequently obtained an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Writing and Directing Career

Stage

He started writing stage plays in college, and his first play, “Party Hats,” was professionally produced at the Kings Head Theater, Islington, directed by Norman Chancer in 1989. The play centered on a political wife, who was auctioning off her hat collection to raise funds for her husband’s re-election campaign, but finds that putting on each hat brings back a piece of the past she might no longer be so easily able to sell off. The play was loosely based on the real world situation of Cecil Parkinson, a Conservative Party Cabinet Minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government,  who created a national scandal by fathering a child with his secretary. The child had learning difficulties and was disowned by Parkinson. The production received notoriety, and much national press, when the role of the philandering politician was coincidentally played by Harry Parkinson - a cousin of Cecil.

Further plays were “Shutters” (1991) Stage by NA/UK Theatre Co American Writers Season and “Toyland” (1991) Staged in Bristol Express Theatre Company’s ‘The Play’s the Thing’ season and ranked in top 5 of Theatre Writing Union Competition.

Film Making

In London from the mid 1980’s to late 1990’s he was a principal in two production companies, Mighty Pen Productions and Talkin Pictures. The former company, co-founded with Jason Squire in 1987, produced corporate videos and events, winning an International Television Association Golden Reel Award (1992) for Best Educational Drama for “Frankly and Honestly.” Talkin Pictures, founded in 1994, with Sally Watson, produced the documentary “The Last Canoe,” which sold to over 30 countries. In 1995 he wrote and directed the short film ‘The Gallery,’  starring Helena Bonham Carter and Tony Robinson which was selected for the London Film Festival and subsequently sold to Channel 4 Television. A final short film, ‘Hope Machine,’ starring Parker Posey was never released when the company went into liquidation after the completion of principal photography.

Writing for Children

Returning to the United States, he started writing for children, with “Lulu and the Hunger Monster” published by Free Spirit Publishing in 2020. This was one of the few books for children that dealt sensitively with the issue of hunger in the classroom. Inspired by his work with food insecure families, he saw how hunger remained an ‘invisible monster’ because no one wanted to talk about it, either because of shame or embarrassment. Hunger became a tangible monster, who swore those afflicted by it to secrecy. The book encouraged children to empathize with the problem, and help each other with it. It won a Social Justice Literature Award and an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Foreword Indies Book Awards.

A bilingual Spanish/English version was published in 2022. Lulu is being followed by two sequels, “Jesse and the Snack Food Genie” and “Frankie and the Food Phantom” that together comprise the ‘Food Justice Books for Kids’ series (Both Free Spirit Publications Oct 2023).

Food Banking Career

Beginning

After involvement with other nonprofits in Santa Barbara - The Granada Theater’s Civic Light Opera and receiving a grant from the California Endowment to teach filmmaking with City@Peace (an organization that used drama to teach mediation and conflict resolution), he entered the world of emergency food. For seven years (2001-2008), he was the Executive Director of the Community Kitchen of Santa Barbara, feeding unhoused Santa Barbarans.

Food Literacy

He was named CEO of the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County in April 2008. Talkin was one of the earliest proponents of using the food bank system not just as a place to store and distribute endless emergency food, but as a vehicle for practical nutrition education that could help people take more control of their own nutritional health. This approach started with the (at the time) controversial decision to ban the distribution of all candy and soda. Talkin crossed swords with the then board chair, who told him that “Candy was like a light for kids who had dark lives.” Foodbank of Santa Barbara County became one of the first food banks to hire a Registered Dietician to advise on ensuring that the best quality food was being distributed.

Talkin focused on designing new programs that would teach ‘food literacy’ to a new generation of children. The Kid’s Farmer’s Market and Healthy School Pantry programs were both nationally recognized with Feeding America’s Hunger’s Hope Awards for the most innovative children’s educational programs in 2011 and 2012.

His Ted Talk, Why Giving People More Food Doesn’t End Hunger, introduced a wider audience to the concept of food literacy, where he talks about the experience observing families throwing away fresh produce that they did not know what to do with, and which spurred him to investigate how to give people the skills and motivation to make use of the abundance of produce in California.

In 2013, he started a blog, “From Hunger into Health", which became influential in the food banking world by challenging food banks to move beyond their traditional role to look at how they could impact the holistic health of the populations they worked with. This grew into a book, Hunger into Health (2018) looking at how this new approach in Santa Barbara, could operate as a national model. The book featured an introduction by national hunger advocate, Jeff Bridges: “The approaches that Erik and his team have pioneered in Santa Barbara have been widely influential. They demonstrate an opportunity to offer the empowerment, education and hope that every hungry person in America deserves.”

Successes

The Foodbank grew dramatically in size during these years, which saw further programming innovations, such as FLIP (Food Literacy In Preschool) and TLC (Teens Love Cooking), which are taught by community volunteers allowed the impact to be scaled up. The Foodbank learned key lessons from the Thomas Fire and Debris Flow in order to build its disaster preparedness, after realizing how easily Santa Barbara could be cut off for weeks by even a single break in the 101 freeway. This led to the development of a new Disaster Feeding Plan that stepped away from the traditional approach of mass feeding to recognize the vital importance of focusing food support on the many people who would choose to shelter in place.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for the Foodbank’s services doubled, and the organization quickly opened two new warehouses and totally revamped its distribution model to allow for safer drive-thru distributions and more direct deliveries to the homes of seniors and immuno-compromised individuals. The huge increase in poundage and programming was made possible by an infusion of over forty California National Guards assigned to the Foodbank.

In the fall of 2021, a new permanent 57,000sq ft Santa Barbara warehouse (dubbed ‘The Sharehouse’) was purchased along with an accompanying administration and education building. The warehouse will be completed in early 2024 and will position the organization to increase food supply and education for the next two decades.

Volunteering

He is a previous Board Member of the California Association of Food Banks and sat on Feeding America’s National Advisory Council.

Personal Life

Erik lives in Santa Barbara and is married to Mari Talkin, Head of School at The Anacapa School, Santa Barbara. He has four children (Ella, Felix, Lili and Mia) and two step children (Hannah and Max).