Last Wednesday (05/07), MK Food Bank officially launched 'MK Can', a huge world record attempt for the longest continuous line of food cans.
The official launch event took place at the iconic MK Rose in Campbell Park, the starting location of the Guinness World Record attempt to take place on World Food Day on 16th October, and saw local businesses, schools, communities and parish councils coming together to see how they can help.
MK Food Bank mobilised the Milton Keynes Community in a bid to line up 132,000 cans at Campbell Park later in the year, MK Community Choir sang to the crowds, and MKFM's Darren and Lia officially counted down to the launch of the challenge.
MK Can will see a 10k route wind its way round Milton Keynes’ Campbell Park, the city’s green heart, starting at The World Food Day Pillar at the MK Rose, with all of the tins then going to the food bank to help feed people across the city.
MK Food Bank hopes the attempt will attract wide-reaching, positive publicity for Milton Keynes, and put our new city on the international map.
Louisa Hobbs, Operations Manager at the MK Food Bank said, “The inspiration for attempting the record came from a chance conversation with a radio DJ last year who suggested it would be good way to engage the community. On further investigation we realised we had a very ambitious record to beat – in 2021 a Food Bank in Cape Town made a continuous line of over 90,000 cans! Once we got over the initial shock, we realised this would be a brilliant way, not only to collect a massive amount of food, but to mobilise the whole Milton Keynes to come together as a community.
"We’ve chosen to go big - creating a 10km line of cans in Campbell Park, on Monday 16th October which is World Food Day. If we are successful, this will generate around 130,000 cans of food – around half the tins we need to supply our emergency food parcels for a whole year. To do this we want 400 business and community groups to help us by adopting a section of the line each, collecting the cans and helping us smash this record for Milton Keynes."
Can you help? Find out more here.
