The latest in our series of Bristol Breakfasts interviews is with Love Food Festival founder Lorna Knapman, who talks to Bristol Culture editor Martin Booth at Hart’s Bakery. Illustration by Imogen Clowes.

Lorna Knapman is one of those lucky people whose passion has also become their life’s work.

“Love Food was never a business plan. It was a feeling. It was something that I felt I needed to do,” she says with inspiring zeal.

Chef Rick Stein summed it up perfectly when he said that the festival aims to reconnect people with the simple pleasures of buying, growing and cooking great, locally-produced food.

Lorna was a single mum on benefits six years ago when she founded the festival with some of her own savings and a grant from the Prince’s Trust. Since then there have been more than 50 festivals everywhere from its original home in the Paintworks to the middle of Millennium Square.

The next festival takes place tomorrow (Sunday, June 22) at Kings Weston House.

But one festival isn’t enough for Lorna who acted as curator for May’s Bristol Food Connections, which she confirms will definitely be returning for its second outing next year.

We meet at Hart’s Bakery, conveniently located opposite her office in Bristol & Exeter House. Lorna comes here so much – at least once a day – that she has her own tab. Today we sit on one of the small tables outside in the bright sunshine.

For Lorna, Laura Hart’s business sums up the vibrancy of the food scene in Bristol.

“It just represents everything that’s great about Bristol. You’re constantly bumping into people you know, people have great conversations about food here. The food is honest, it’s real, it’s all locally sourced. It’s made with love.

“It’s everything I hold dear about Bristol, all in an arch. And it’s got a different special here every lunchtime so you get a varied diet!”

Lorna’s passion burns as fiercely as the bread ovens, and in between bites on her sourdough toast with homemade marmalade, she says that everything in life – good and bad – can be traced back to food.

She tells me of a trip that she made during Food Connections to an event in Lockleaze where an 80-year-old woman who had recently lost her husband commented how much she had enjoyed sitting down with other people to eat a meal, and also how much she misses the area’s local shopkeepers, with McColl’s on Gainsborough Square the only option for many people to shop locally.

Community is also at the heart of much of Lorna’s thinking, as is the battle against supermarkets. For Lorna, the two are intrinsically linked.

“Supermarkets and fast food. It’s the opposite of this (Hart’s). It’s processed, it’s not real, it’s artificial weird stuff. It’s not food, it’s not good for you. The money is going out of Bristol. It stinks to be honest.”

With Food Connections set to return in 2015, that could very well take up most of Lorna’s time for the foreseeable future, but there will always be Love Food as well.

Lorna cites her mentor from the Prince’s Trust, Erica Thomas, as someone who without she wouldn’t be where she is today. “Just encouraging me and believing that I could do made all the difference. She’s been an absolute legend.”

She then tells me a story about how at primary school, when other children wanted to be astronauts or fire fighters, she wanted to arrange a trip to the farm to see how the cows were milked.

“I had this whole thing about a big camp, which actually I’m now in discussions about. What has stayed as a thread throughout my life is wanting people to understand about food, farming, the countryside, animals and nature.

“I went really off the rails in my early teens and kind of wrote myself off badly. I didn’t do A-levels, didn’t do a degree, didn’t really have any aspirations.

“I just thought I was a failure in life because I hadn’t followed that traditional route. So I just did whatever but always clung on to my food.”

Focusing on both her and her son eating well, Love Food was born and since then Lorna has made a living out of food, enthusing others and gaining fans as high as Gordon Brown who when Prime Minister invited her to a reception at Number 10.

“Food has always been the anchor for me and I think it’s true in so many people’s lives. You can hang onto good food, you can eat well and you can cook, possibly grow your own food. It just keeps you together.

“I say it so many times, food is the basis of everything, but it really is. If you eat well then you feel well, you have energy, therefore you’re positive, you’re more likely to get out there and do the thing that you’re supposed to be doing and connect with people.

“Getting your hands in the soil and growing your own food. That is so good for your wellbeing.”

Practising what she preaches, in the front garden of her house in Brislington are tomatoes, salads, strawberries and more, which her now nine-year-old son Ned helps her cultivate.

After our breakfast at Hart’s, Lorna gets on her bike to work from home for the day.

“My work encompasses all the things that I genuinely love,” she says before leaving. “Growing my own food, cooking my own food, eating my own food. Eating with friends, going out and enjoying the countryside. That’s my job. How cool is that?”

For more information about tomorrow’s Love Food Festival at Kings Weston House, visit www.lovefoodfestival.com/kingsweston-event.html

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Hart’s Bakery

Arch 35 Lower Approach Road, Bristol, BS1 6QS

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Read previous Bristol Breakfast interviews with Park Street water slide artist Luke Jerram and Bristol Old Vic artistic director Tom Morris.