clipped from www.theage.com.au

THERE will be a courtyard with a cafe on one corner, a restaurant stretching along one side and, opposite, specialist food shops: a butcher, a cafe, a chocolate maker. The cheese shop will have a resident cheesemaker and the greengrocer will sell only fruit and vegetables that have been grown locally and are in season.

Ideally, musicians will occupy a neighbouring building and you'll hear them rehearsing, singing or tuning up as you shop and eat. And a row of rooms one storey above the food courtyard will be Australia's first and only College of Slow Food.

This is the Slow Food movement's vision for the Abbotsford convent, where the principles of slow food will be studied by hospitality graduates, and where anyone can buy and eat food that is grown in an ecologically sustainable way and prepared with love and care. The movement's Australian headquarters is already housed in the convent, where its first Australian festival, A Taste of Slow, ended last month.