The Social Practices of Food Bank Volunteer Work

The on-going rise in demand experienced by voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) providing emergency food aid has been described as a sign of social public health crisis the UK (Loopstra, 2018; Lambie-Mumford, 2019), compounded since 2020 impact (and responses to) Covid 19 (Power et al., 2020). In this article we adopted practice approach to understanding work bank volunteering. We identify how ‘helping others’, ‘deploying coping strategies’ ‘creating atmospheres’ are key specific connected) forms shared practice. Further, these practices sometimes suffused faith-based analysis offers insights into such spaces care encounter (Williams 2016; Cloke 2017) function, considers implications for distinctive organisational (the growth which subject justified critique) suggests avenues future research.