UnLtd’s podcasts feature brilliant social entrepreneurs around the UK tackling society’s most pressing issues with sustainable, purposeful business.
We have produced two 5-part series’ – How Do You Solve a Problem Like..? and Changing Places. These share stories of enterprising people with solutions to issues faced by those in their community - and across the UK.
Series 2
Changing Places
Changing Places
In “Changing Places”, we meet social entrepreneurs from across the UK, who are creating solutions to local issues in their communities.
From Brighton, South Wales, Dundee and North Staffordshire, these local leaders share how they have overcome the pandemic’s challenges - building creative, collaborative and powerful social ventures.
The leaders in this series have been a part of UnLtd’s Resilient Communities programme, made possible by the players of People’s Postcode Lottery. They have co-produced the series alongside podcast professional Vic Elizabeth Turnbull from MIC Media – with social entrepreneurs from each location interviewing fellow changemakers in the area.
If you enjoyed watching our Changing Places documentary series, this podcast is an opportunity to revisit the communities around the UK and meet more social entrepreneurs creating positive social change in Brighton, South Wales, Dundee and North Staffordshire.
Changing Places is hosted by Alex Philips, an experienced Social Entrepreneur Support Manager at UnLtd who works closely with social entrepreneurs in North Staffordshire.
Changing Places
Transcript - Changing Places: Trailer
[MUSIC]
ALEX:
You don't have to look far to find people with innovation, passion and community trust. They're the ones who are working hard to respond to the challenges faced by local people.
In this Changing Places podcast you'll hear from local people from across the UK who are creating solutions to local issues. I'm Alex from UnLtd, the folks behind this podcast. I'm from Stoke and I work with resilient communities in North Staffordshire. I'll be the one taking you on this journey.
In each episode you'll visit a different local community in the UK to hear how they're changing their part of the world for the better. From innovative sustainable food businesses in Brighton:
MAN #1:
I mean how many meals did you send out today girls?
WOMAN #1:
Almost near enough 700 meals today.
ALEX:
Supporting and empowering people with additional needs in Dundee:
MAN #2:
I started my journey as a young apprentice, and I think it's great to give back and just to help others.
ALEX:
To providing mental health training for veterans in the Welsh Valleys:
WOMAN #2:
We just want to create a social enterprise where we can help the veteran community to thrive.
ALEX:
And how creativity is making a difference in North Staffordshire:
WOMAN #3:
The council said it was one of the most creative business plans they'd ever seen.
ALEX:
The changing places podcast is coming soon. Find and follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
[MUSIC]
Meet social entrepreneurs from across the UK, who are creating solutions to local issues in their communities.
Read more
Changing Places
August 18, 2021
Brighton - August 18, 2021
Transcript - Changing Places: Episode 1 - Brighton
[MUSIC]
ALEX:
You don't have to look far to find people with innovation, passion and community trust. They're the ones who are working hard to respond to the challenges faced by local people. In this Changing Places podcast, you'll hear from local people from across the UK who are creating solutions to local issues.
I'm Alex from UnLtd, the folks behind this podcast. I'm from Stoke and I work with resilient communities in North Staffordshire. I'll be the one taking you on this journey. In each episode you'll visit a different local community in the UK to hear how they're changing their part of the world for the better.
In this episode join me as we head to Brighton to talk food. Brighton was named the UK's capital of food sustainability in 2020. So that's why we have Joel Essex from the BrightStore, an affordable food scheme and shop in Brighton, and Brian Coyle from East Brighton Food Co-operative to talk to you in this episode of the Changing Places podcast.
They chat the who, why and what fors of their food flavoured social enterprises but first, a familiar voice sets the scene for your visit to Brighton. It's comedian Mark Steel somewhere down by the sea.
MARK STEEL:
Hello, I'm Mark Steel, comedian, sometime resident of Brighton and Hove and welcome to this episode of UnLtd's Resilient Communities podcast. Now, there are so many brilliant things about living in Brighton.
There's the sheer quirkiness of it. The fact that you get used to these things after a while and then when somebody comes and visits they're astonished and go, "Look!" "What?" "Look, look! There's a bloke naked, covered in glitter doing a tightrope walk from the town hall to the pier!" And when you're used to living in Brighton you go "Oh that's Dave, he's the mayor."
You just get used to it, you get used to the fact there's no point in trying to just go to the shops on a Sunday because the streets will all be packed because there's a London to Brighton hovercraft race. You get used to it. Even the things that looks as if they're what you might get in any town. Like the lawns, aren't normal lawns. They're lawns where outsiders sit there thinking "Can't you all juggle at home?"
There's a beach but it's covered in specially quirky Brighton pebbles and the sea is an especially quirky sea that goes round its slightly crazy pier. And the most brilliant thing to do in Brighton is potter around the Lanes and listen to the vibrant music and get a sense of the art scene.
And there's the food and the countless community projects and social enterprises across the city which, along with the Brighton and Hove food partnership, helped Brighton become the sustainable food capital of the UK last year. And the shops are just so magnificently independent and individual and sometimes you don't really know what the point of them is because they seem to be selling china purple dragons or shoes made out of pus. But that's alright and there's everything from community cookery and composting projects to social supermarkets and community growing gardens in the city that have tripled in the last five years.
All of which are extremely useful to have during a global pandemic and helping Brighton lead the way in changing how local food systems work, making them more resilient, fairer and more sustainable.
So in this episode of the podcast you're going to hear more about some of the people who are helping to change how food works here and how they've worked during the pandemic to keep their local communities fed.
Now I'll be back later but for now I shall leave you in the capable hands of Mr Joel Essex from BrightStore and Brian Coyle from East Brighton Food Co-operative. Just two of the community food projects that are doing such brilliant work across the city.
JOEL ESSEX:
Thanks Mark, splendid stuff there. And I'll certainly keep an eye out for the mayor next time I'm down the seafront.
My name is Joel Essex from BrightStore, a social enterprise and social grocery store based here in Brighton and Hove that's helping to make food a little bit fairer. And along with Brian Coyle from East Brighton Food Co-op, we're going to take you on a little tour of the community food scene in the city.
First up I bend Brian's ears to find out a little more about what East Brighton Food Co-op is all about and then he talks to Sue and Tash, two of their volunteers, to tell us about what goes on during a typical day at the food cooperative. So, I'll see you in a bit.
[MUSIC]
JOEL:
So Brian I was just going to, I guess sort of ask you first off about Brighton Food Co-op, sort of how it all came about for you and how did you first get involved?
BRIAN COYLE:
Well I was aware of the appalling health inequalities and education inequalities in my local area. I got together with a group of local residents, and we set up a group called The Causeway, then my project was food. And out of that project on food, this Brighton Food Co-operative came about.
We was originally set up to do workshops, events, and we got an apple press, a smoothie machine. So basically hands on, get the children cooking, we do cookery lessons, get the community involved around food.
JOEL:
I read about your apple press on your website. It sounds quite good fun.
BRIAN:
It's really, really popular. I mean the adults love it, all the people love it. They just love seeing the apples and seeing the juice come out of it and it just tastes so good. Freshly pressed apple juice, there's nothing like it. It's just amazing stuff.
JOEL:
I guess it's quite a good way to sort of engage people in a way? If you've got some practical examples, something they can use that's hands on it can make a bit of a difference.
BRIAN:
Oh definitely, I mean the kids love it. And we also get the smoothie bike from the resource centre where the kids have got to pedal the bike to produce the electricity to make the smoothie. That's a good one to get the people involved as well.
We'd envisioned having lunch clubs but COVID-19 came along so we had to put all that on hold. So our lunch club that we was envisioning has now turned into like a delivery service and now we're delivering meals to people in their homes. But we're really looking forward to post Covid and having the biggest lunch club in Brighton.
JOEL:
From hearing about you guys and what you do, I think the one thing that is amazing, or what certainly impresses me, is the sort of scale of the operation really. How many meals are you doing at the moment?
BRIAN:
I mean at the moment we're doing 230 meals a day, 190 meat and 40 vegetarian. But on a Friday we do a triple meal service so we done 690 meals last Friday.
But the scale of the operation, I mean I'm used to working in like wholesale markets in London and I've done logistics for courier companies so it was quite easy to scale it up really. We've got drivers from all over Brighton, volunteers from all over Brighton and Hove.
JOEL:
In many ways we're sort of quite lucky, both BrightStore and East Brighton Food Co-op, it seems to be part of a much sort of wider community food project in the city. Do you see that as something that's quite helpful for you?
BRIAN:
Oh yeah definitely. I mean there's lots of social enterprises in Brighton, I think it's the capital for social enterprises in England. These organisations, social enterprises, are able to step in, they can work a lot quicker, they know their communities.
Working with all the different community groups, the social enterprises in Brighton has been absolutely amazing. I mean we're very, very lucky to have such a strong food sector here and it's been a blessing. With BrightStore Joel, how did it come about for you? I mean it wasn't even here last year and you've made quite a massive mark on the food scene.
JOEL:
Yeah, it was really weird. I mean if I'd been sat here at year ago and I was having this conversation I would never have got involved with something like this. But it was, I started doing some volunteering for Mutual Aid just locally and that was just doing some, basically just putting leaflets through peoples' doors. Just to say you know, if you need any help if you need any food deliveries, here's my number.
And then I started doing some collections for a new food bank that started at the BMECP Centre in Fleet Street, the Black and Ethnic Minority Centre. And then just through Mutual Aid I got chatting to a few other people locally who were doing something similar. Sort of one thing led to another really.
We kind of got contacted by Brighton and Hove Food Partnership and they sort of said, "Look there's some funding available to try and maybe do something a bit more long term and sustainable". So the idea of BrightStore was born out of this idea of having an affordable food scheme whereby, it was almost kind of a next step up from a food bank, working really closely with food banks.
People can sign up as members, they can come in as part of the store, have some choice and variety on the food. It was very much sort of a co-operative model so people pay what they can afford for a really good weekly shop which is fresh food sourced locally in their local community and as part of that they help to run the store. So that's the kind of idea behind it I guess in principle.
BRIAN:
That's brilliant. And has the lockdown had any impact on how you operate?
JOEL:
Yeah it has. It's weird 'cos the sort of five people who are still very much the core team, none of us had any experience, previous experience of working in this area. So it was all new to us really and we kind of emerged out of coronavirus and the pandemic but I don't think we feel like we're defined by it.
I think there was a need for this sort of way of doing things with food and food systems before coronavirus and there's definitely going to be a need for it for the future. But we definitely had to sort of learn on our feet and adapt our service through lockdowns. Is there anything that you kind of think, have you got an idea of what you might look like in a year's time or two years' time or do you not have time? Like it is with us, it is very focused on getting stuff done every week?
BRIAN:
Yeah, well I mean our mission is to get fresh fruit into schools and youth clubs and get people eating healthy food.
So I'm hoping that we're going to have loads of young chefs in the next couple of years as a result of all our cookery classes. So lots of volunteers to come forward to cook lunch hopefully. And do you see BrightStore, I mean you've got two stores already, I mean did you see yourself adding more stores to the portfolio so to speak?
JOEL:
Yeah. Yeah. One of the things we're quite keen on is, in Hollingdean in particular there's a whole sort of network of allotment sites so we're really keen to get people engaged with growing or growing projects that are going on in their local community.
And I think there is another way to do food and local food systems, it doesn't have to be the way it's normally been. You know it can be a much more positive, empowering experience for people than maybe what it is at the moment for a lot of people.
BRIAN:
Yeah I mean that's brilliant. And we're lucky we've got quite a forward looking council and a great food partnership and everyone wants to get community growing at the top of the agenda which will be just brilliant. So here's looking forward to maybe two or three years from now, there's going to be little vegetable gardens all over the city Joel.
JOEL:
Definitely, definitely. I'm up for that. Yeah, I'm up for donning my overalls and getting stuck in and making some positive change.
BRIAN:
Brilliant mate, brilliant. Well keep up the great work you're doing Joel, it's a pleasure working with you brother.
JOEL:
Yeah brilliant Brian. Alright it's been great chatting to you.
BRIAN:
Beautiful.
[MUSIC]
BRIAN COYLE:
Hello this is, ah I'll start again.
[LAUGHTER]
BRIAN COYLE:
This is Brian Coyle from the East Brighton Food Co-op and I'm with two of our top volunteers. These two people are amazing, they've been with us since the beginning of the Robert Lodge Kitchen but why are they here? Well, that's a good question. I'm going to pass it over to the wonderful Sue and Tash.
SUE:
Hi I'm Sue Meechin and I've worked here since the very first day.
TASH:
Hi I'm Tash Sharma and I've been here since April in 2020.
BRIAN:
OK why did you both volunteer at East Brighton Food Co-op?
SUE:
I work with vulnerable children and I knew that their families and parents would be struggling during the pandemic so I decided to come over and do what I could to help them.
BRIAN:
How did you end up here Tash?
TASH:
After I was furloughed I looked up the Brighton Food Partnership website and looked at my local area and got in touch with East Brighton Food Co-op knowing that there's a lot of people in this area who would benefit from this service.
BRIAN:
Oh brilliant, brilliant. How many meals did you send out today girls?
TASH:
\230.
SUE:
Times three.
TASH:
Times three.
SUE:
So there's near enough 700 meals in one day.
BRIAN:
700 meals in one day! Oh my goodness. And what was on the menu today?
SUE:
We had jacket potatoes with coleslaw.
TASH:
We had a lovely roast dinner with chicken.
SUE:
We had pheasant spaghetti bolognaise
BRIAN:
It was venison wasn't it?
SUE:
Oh sorry venison.
BRIAN:
We're getting really posh here aren't we? I mean how do you do the meals then Tash? What's your typical meal? What are you looking to put into a container that you send out to these lovely people?
TASH:
OK so we're looking for a nice full meal for everybody. We've got to have a good balanced diet, so we'll have some carbohydrate, protein and some vitamins with our vegetables that are always fresh. So some of our task today was bringing in orders from outside, stacking them up and seeing what else we could put in fresh for the meal today.
BRIAN:
Ah brilliant, so as much fruit and vegetables as possible?
TASH:
Exactly.
BRIAN:
Brilliant. That's amazing. What days did you do this week?
SUE:
I done Thursday and Friday. Yesterday was Thursday and I done ten in the morning until eight o'clock last night
BRIAN:
Ten in the morning until eight o'clock at night? What!
SUE:
Yes.
BRIAN:
No!
SUE:
Yes, we had a very busy day. Today wasn't as long. It was from half nine, till five.
BRIAN:
So your typical day, when you came in yesterday Sue what did you do?
SUE:
Yesterday I helped with the prepping, mainly.
BRIAN:
What did you prep?
SUE:
Potatoes, carrots, broccoli, onions. All the veg that was going out today.
BRIAN:
And what veg? Was there any more in there?
SUE:
Cabbage, parsnip. Cooked loads and loads of parsnips. And done all the roast potatoes, uh, jacket potatoes for today.
BRIAN:
Oh wow. That's good. And the coleslaw, where do you get the coleslaw from? Do you get it from the shop?
TASH:
No, absolutely not. We managed to get all our volunteer help to create four tubs of carrots, celeriac, cabbage, onion and it made a wonderful mix so that was great
BRIAN:
Oh wow that is absolutely amazing. What sort of people are getting your meals then, I mean like who are you helping?
SUE:
All different types of people. From the really vulnerable, disabled, right up to the elderly. Anyone that's really struggling in the pandemic, we don't say no to anybody.
BRIAN:
Ok and do you charge for these meals?
TASH:
Absolutely not. And we've also found that we've got quite a lot of elderly population aound this particular area, as well as people suddenly going into isolation or who are furloughed since second lockdown and third lockdown. So we found that the clients have changed over time but we're still providing more and more meals.
BRIAN:
Yeah, and can you see the need for this meal service continuing, like the need for this meal service?
SUE:
Oh I hope so. I think there's many, many people who need this continuous help and all while there are volunteers here to provide the help we will continue doing so.
BRIAN:
Well thank you so much Sue and Tash. You are heroes, and we couldn't have done any of this without you. You are just amazing and thank you for all the work you are doing, you're amazing.
SUE:
Thank you.
TASH:
Thanks. That's great.
BRIAN:
And that's a cut.
TASH:
That's brilliant!
[CLAPPING]
[MUSIC]
JOEL:
Hello! Joel again here. Now coming up, the final bit of today's episode. It's my chat with the lovely Flo, a volunteer and member of BrightStore. I caught up with her to chat about everything from being able to get food when you're living in a self-isolating household to trying new vegetables and how volunteering at BrightStore has helped her meet new people and become more sociable. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. Now I remember, I probably met your Mum at BrightStore before I met you and I think it's fair to say your Mum's quite a character.
FLO:
Oh yeah, the friendliest there is. Very friendly!
JOEL:
Yeah. I just wanted to start off and ask you a little bit about your family and what home is like really.
FLO:
Yeah.
JOEL:
Who does the cooking, what do you eat?
FLO:
My Mum does most of it. If I'm making something, it's all based around potatoes. Which is why I love BrightStore because they have so many potatoes!
JOEL:
Yeah we definitely, that's definitely something we're never short of is potatoes.
FLO:
Yeah.
JOEL:
Before sort of BrightStore, what kind of issues if any were you having with food as a family?
FLO:
I think we just found that fresh fruit and veg just runs out really quickly. Which is why it's good to have BrightStore as an option and I think since covid has hit the prices have definitely gone up at the shops.
JOEL:
Yeah I think that's definitely right. A lot of people who come and use BrightStore have sort of said that they find prices in the supermarket more expensive than they have done previously.
FLO:
Yeah. Yeah, they're definitely going up, I've noticed it, it's crazy.
JOE:
Yeah. And you mentioned about, just talked about coronavirus and I wonder if you could describe the sort of impact that coronavirus has had in terms of getting that weekly shop and getting access to food.
FLO:
Back in the Summer for example I would have said, "Oh no I can't go to the shops I'm so paranoid, walking around is too difficult".
JOEL:
So having something like BrightStore is a bit more of an easier way to do your weekly shop I guess?
FLO:
Especially recently, they've set up the new delivery service which is amazing. You know, not everyone is able to walk, say for example if you have kids, you can't just pop out whenever you want to and go to the shops can you? BrightStore is amazing for that.
JOEL:
I know that some of you, well you've had to self-isolate I think or certainly your Mum has?
FLO:
Oh yeah!
JOEL:
How has that impacted on how you can get food?
FLO
Right. If we did not have BrightStore I don't know how we would have managed it. Because obviously BrightStore were amazing and that whole time, I think we got about two deliveries in that space and it was just the best thing 'cos we were not able to go out and about ourselves.
JOEL:
I suppose for a lot of people who have been in a similar situation really, you don’t appreciate-
FLO:
No.
JOEL:
That need to be able to go out and do basic things like do your weekly shops and then all of a sudden-
FLO:
You forget, you honestly forget. So, what I got told when I got the phone call from Test and Trace was that there is a government scheme where people can do your shopping for you but I just thought hmm, that would be a bit too complicated you know?
JOEL:
One of the things I was going to ask was what sort of difference has having BrightStore on the doorstep made for you and the rest of the family really?
FLO:
So, when you do the weekly shop you tend to have your usual little veggies that you're going to pick up. Right? What I found out with BrightStore, because I do a lot of the packing, there are so many different veggies that I would just never consider to pick up and now I'm like, you know what yeah I'll put that in the bag, give it a try at home and it actually turns out to be quite good. It's just, you know, broadened my taste in veggies. It's been great.
JOEL:
And is there anything that you've tried cooking for the first time?
FLO:
So, I take the stuff home for my mum to cook.
[LAUGHTER]
FLO:
That's exactly what I do.
JOEL:
Good old Mam.
FLO:
That's exactly what I do.
JOEL:
And you mentioned just then about getting involved with volunteering yourself with BrightStore.
FLO:
Yes. Yeah.
JOEL:
Can you just sort of go back I guess, how do you first sort of get involved really?
FLO:
I just went in, just to see what it was all about. 'Cos I'd heard about it from my Mum but I was just like hmm, I don't understand what it's all about. And then I must have started speaking to Rachel, one of the leaders and then I was just asking, I was like so how does this work, what's going on here?
And then she explained it all to me and I thought it sounds like a very nice thing you guys are doing, I'd like to help out if it's possible. And it was all pretty straightforward. She said, yeah no problem come next week on a Tuesday and you can help me out. That's kind of how it all started.
JOEL:
What's a typical volunteer day for you like?
FLO:
So if I go back to the start I was on the reception so I would greet the people when they came in, say hello, take down their membership number. But we no longer do that whole process of the reception because of the new lockdown rules so now how we're doing things is we get the deliveries in the mornings, bag all the veggies up.
By the time I get there at ten, Claire has already done the essentials, so this is the tinned foods, the pasta, rice. The whole point is just to bag the stuff up for each family and then when they come in they collect their bag. Ooh there is also the already prepared meals. So some families will pick up a meal that's already been made. Like a hot meal, which is amazing. As you can see that probably saves a lot of time.
JOEL:
Yeah.
FLO:
There's also dog food. Some people have dogs, they can pick up some dog food which is amazing. I think that's so cute, there's something for everyone.
JOEL:
I guess you don't, when you think of sort of an affordable food scheme you don’t normally tend to think about dog food but yeah you're right, I guess a lot of people have been having dogs in lockdown so it's probably an essential service.
FLO:
Exactly. I mean where else can you go and spend less than £10 and get fruit and veg, tinned foods, pasta, dog food and a hot meal? You know?
JOEL:
Yeah.
FLO:
You know?
JOEL:
That's pretty good. What sort of impact has volunteering at BrightStore had on you?
FLO:
So being in lockdown for so long you kind of forget that there is other people out there that have their own lives that are different than yours. So being at BrightStore, one of the benefits is you know I get to actually go and socialise for a little bit once a week.
JOEL:
I think what you said was really interesting about that social element. Even if you're going to do your shop there or even if you're volunteering, that social element is really important and clearly that sounds like it's something that's quite important for you?
FLO:
As human beings we're quite social people. I didn't realise that before lockdown because I was one of those people who said, oh I'm an introvert, I like to be at home, stay indoors, I don't like talking to people. I've learned that's quite the opposite actually. I've become more willing to be friendly to strangers. I'm like hi how are you, I can't wait to talk now.
JOEL:
Having met you Flo I can't believe that you said you were an introvert, that doesn't ring true for me.
FLO:
[LAUGHING] I know, I know, I know.
JOEL:
I was probably just going to finish off asking if you had any thoughts on how important projects like BrightStore are in terms of continuing after the pandemic.
FLO:
People aren't just going to magically get money from nowhere because the pandemic is over. I don't think that's how it works and we're just still getting the word out there. Not everyone is aware that it is a thing.
Just the other day, well yesterday literally, when we were at BrightStore we had one man, I think he must have walked past, and he came in to ask what's going on and he told us about how obviously he's got quite a bigger family and it's very expensive to get food. And I think even if the pandemic is over there's still families like that that would really appreciate having BrightStore and I think it should still be around 100%.
JOEL:
I think you're definitely right there. Well it's been lovely talking to you Flo and just hearing your experience of BrightStore and how it's sort of helped you and the family. Thanks so much for coming and joining us on the podcast Flo. It's been really lovely chatting to you.
FLO:
Oh it's been lovely to be here.
[MUSIC]
MARK STEEL:
Marvellously inspiring stuff there I think from Joel, Brian and all the fine people from BrightStore and the East Brighton Food Co-operative. Just two of the community food projects that are doing such amazing work in the city.
And brilliant to hear from some of those who are working on what they would call the front line. The First World War trench of community food in Brighton and Hove. And you can find out more about what's going on at BrightStore and East Brighton Food Co-op by visiting their websites.
So, I shall finish my stroll along the quirky beach, avoid becoming the latest victim of the seagulls and thank you all for listening. I've been Mark Steel thank you and goodbye.
[MUSIC]
ALEX:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Changing Places, a podcast created by UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs. We find, fund and support individuals to make a difference in the UK. This support includes grants and investment, one-to-one coaching and mentorship opportunities.
We carry out research, tell stories of social entrepreneurs and their impact and influence policy makers to create a supportive world for the incredible work of social entrepreneurs. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed to this episode. To find out more about the organisations you heard simply have a look at the show notes.
More information about our Resilient Communities project and the other programmes we deliver to support social entrepreneurs can be found at the UnLtd website. UnLtd.org.uk. Changing Places has been made possible thanks to the players of People's Postcode Lottery and is a MIC media production.
[MUSIC]
END
Brighton - August 18, 2021
Who are the people transforming food systems in Brighton, to make food fairer for all? Comedian Mark Steel introduces us to social entrepreneurs with innovative, sustainable solutions to food inequality in Brighton and Hove.
We hear from Bryan Coyle of East Brighton Food Co-op and Joel Essex from BrightStore about how their community food schemes have brought fresh, locally sourced produce and hot meals to those that need it throughout the pandemic.
Find out more
Changing Places
September 1, 2021
South Wales Valleys - September 1, 2021
Transcript - Changing Places: Episode 2 - South Wales
[MUSIC]
ALEX:
You don't have to look far to find people with innovation, passion and community trust. They're the ones who are working hard to respond to the challenges faced by local people. In this Changing Places podcast, you'll hear from local people from across the UK who are creating solutions to local issues.
I'm Alex from UnLtd, the folks behind this podcast. I'm from Stoke and I work with resilient communities in North Staffordshire. I'll be the one taking you on this journey. In each episode you'll visit a different local community in the UK to hear how they're changing their part of the world for the better.
In this episode we're taking a trip to the Welsh Valleys with Gemma Hallett, the founder of social enterprise miFuture which is all about mobilising school leavers and those furthest from the labour market towards better futures. Gemma's here to tell you all about the fantastic women who are making a real difference in their communities.
As Gemma explains in the episode, female fronted social enterprises are booming in the Welsh Valleys. So, coming up, she chats to Kelly Farr from YourNorth Veteran Support and Kate Hadley from Little Lounge to tell you how they're changing lives in their corner of the world. And stay tuned right to the end as they all have something to ask you. Over to you Gemma.
GEMMA:
Hello! And welcome to the South Wales Valleys. I'm going to be your host for this podcast. I'm Gemma Hallett. I'm the founder of miFuture. miFuture is on a mission to mobilise those furthest from the labour market towards higher paid, higher skilled, prosperous futures and we're doing that through technology and an app that's being co-created with two and a half thousand young people here in the Valleys.
I don't want to spend too much time talking about me though. I did some reaching out in preparation for this and I spoke to some other socially purposed business and social entrepreneurs in the area and what we're seeing is real enthusiasm from individuals and partners who want to make a social difference here in the South Wales Valleys.
Luckily UnLtd have brought their building Resilient Communities programme, which is part funded by the People's Postcode Lottery, to South Wales and we have provided over £60,000 to 23 individuals over the last three years to help them set up and grow their venture. What's even more surprising maybe is the fact that the majority of those are females.
We're seeing this real movement in females starting ventures that are socially purposed. We're seeing real growth around mental health and access to employment and we're starting to see some real key partners in the area. Such as Welsh ICE, where you know that's a community where I started with other social purposed businesses and the Bevan Foundation, who are making it possible to raise these issues at policy level and they put their weight behind social entrepreneurship.
So there's lots happening in Wales, in South Wales, but let's talk about what's actually happening with two great entrepreneurs. I'm going to introduce you to Kelly and Kate who are running their social enterprises in the South Wales Valleys. They've been supported by UnLtd and the building Resilient Communities programme.
So I'm going to bring them in and they're going to tell us about what drives them, their successes and their challenges and then at the end we're going to do some kind of ask of you. Because it's all well you listening but we need more momentum, we need more support, so there will be an ask from the girls. So get involved!
Let's help the social and resilient businesses and enterprises we have here in South Wales grow further and make more of an impact. OK so like I mentioned, female social entrepreneurship is currently booming in the South Wales Valleys so I've called in Kelly and Katie to tell us about the impact that they're making with their enterprises and how they're making our communities more resilient.
So I'm not going to do the introduction because I won't do them justice. So if we head on over to Kelly.
KELLY:
Thank you. So I'm Kelly and alongside my husband Jamie we run YourNorth Veteran Support and our aim is to provide free mental wellbeing training for the veteran community of Wales. So we're going to achieve this by providing wellbeing workshops covering happiness, kindness, mindfulness, basically loads of different wellbeing topics.
We're also going to provide first aid for mental health training courses and coaching. So we're based in Ebbw Vale and our why, so this is really important to Jamie and I, we're both veterans with combined 41 year service in the Royal Air Force.
So we know the challenges faced in the veteran community, so we just want to create a social enterprise where we can help the veteran community to thrive and realise how valuable they are within that community. So we want to build like a resilient community within a community.
GEMMA:
I love that. I love that and who better to do that than two of their friends?
KELLY:
Thank you.
GEMMA:
Yeah. So Katie tell us about your enterprise.
KATIE:
I run a project really in a small village called Cilfynydd which is just outside Pontypridd and it's grown organically to become an enterprise but we never set out for it to be that formal or you know forward thinking.
We started off as a really basic baby and toddler group about five years ago and the fact that there wasn't much really going on locally, it's just really snowballed to become a much bigger project which is now looking to take on its own premises and open a community café which will really act as a hub for the local community. But really the focus is family wellbeing.
GEMMA:
So it started as like a project that grew into this kind of snowballing enterprise?
KATIE:
Yeah. Someone said to me a couple of days ago, 'How do you feel you know managing this big team of people and this big project?' And I was like 'If you had asked me to do this five years ago I would have gone absolutely no way, I am not interested in doing that'.
But because it's grown organically, steadily and naturally. Like everything we've developed and started to do and progress in and new initiatives and new arms of the project, has all made sense at the right time and so yeah it is what it is now which is a bit of a beast but it's a beautiful beast, put it that way! [LAUGHS]
GEMMA:
Wow. So you've successfully grown organically. I love that. Kelly what's been some of your successes?
KELLY:
Ah do you know, where do I begin? Considering we haven't even launched yet it's just been phenomenal, the support we've received.
GEMMA:
So you're pre-launch?
KELLY:
Pre-launch yeah. So we're just putting the finishing touches to our business plan so we're aiming to launch for the 1st of April. So we entered a competition in December to win a free office for the year, ten minutes from the house, worth five grand and we won.
GEMMA:
Ah congratulations.
KATIE:
Amazing.
GEMMA:
Ah thanks Katie. We've got a brilliant board of directors who all bring something different to the table which is great. One of them is another CIC that we've partnered up with so we've go access to a music venue, it's brilliant. And obviously the support from UnLtd we've received is just incredible. So, do you know what, we're just eternally grateful for everything that we've received so far, it's been amazing.
GEMMA:
It's validation, and I can hear the validation in both your stories. The community made yours grow Katie and Kelly you got support which, you know when you're sitting in isolation thinking I wanna start this, and you really, at the beginning you don't know do you if anyone is going to embrace it or help you do it.
And then Kelly you get all that support from office space, board of directors, financial support and then Katie, you've got this community that's just gone 'We want this' and it just snowballs and it just grows massively.
KATIE:
Yeah.
GEMMA:
Yeah, so in terms of success I love that because it's internal success rather than, well you know we've won this award, or we've won that award, or somebody has said this about us. I love this kind of organic success and the support of others. But let's go from success to challenges because it's not easy, we've all been through it.
We've all, you know, it's a rollercoaster of emotions at times isn't it and obviously things like Covid doesn't help. So, what has been your biggest challenge so far?
KELLY:
Great question. So, starting any sort of business, let alone a social enterprise, is challenging, especially in a global pandemic. So what we're finding challenging is the market seems to be saturated at the moment with what we offer, especially like online mental health training, you know you can just log onto Google and there's thousands of people coming up.
So we've made a real effort to engage with veteran hubs, charities throughout Wales, just to let them know who we are, say hello and build those really strong relationships early on. So that they know who we are when they are looking for people to provide this training for the veteran community.
GEMMA:
Collaboration and relationships are really important to overcome challenges aren't they?
KELLY:
Absolutely.
GEMMA:
I found, I work in the education and youth employment space, so you know they saw me as a competitor initially in that space and I had to go and make relationships and say 'Look I'm not here to replace any service that exists, I want to support it from youth perspective'. Katie, what challenges have you come up against?
KATIE:
[LAUGHS.] Yeah the past twelve months have just been madness. I mean our, our niche, you know with all baby and toddler provision it's about being together, it's about getting out of the house and networking with other parents and building those relationships, you know to provide that resilience and that community that you need when you're a new parent.
And that has been impossible for us to be able to do in the past twelve months which has been really tricky. We moved some things online, you know that started off really well and then I think this kind of Zoom fatigue that people are talking about?
GEMMA:
Yeah.
KATIE:
That did set in a couple of months in. In the Summer we managed to do some outdoor stuff which was lovely. Really our biggest challenge for the early years stuff and networking parents together has been a huge springboard, in a positive way, in reaching out into different areas in how we reach the community and how we serve the community.
Because we were not able to do our baby and toddler stuff, we started running a community pantry through the FareShare scheme that we've been a part of for the past, oh three or four years I think, since about 2016, but it's always been for the baby and toddler groups. But because we couldn't run the baby and toddler groups we just thought 'You know what this food is going to waste, let's give it out into the community'.
Little Lounge now is an umbrella for a community pantry food provision which is amazing. We've promoted it as an eco-project rather than a food project. So we've really gone down the route of, you know this is a food waste reduction scheme, you know let's all play our part in making sure this food, which is edible and brilliant, doesn't go to landfill.
So in a way Covid has been a huge challenge, we're really concerned about those parents that haven't been able to have that support over the past twelve months, with new families, but in another way it's really made us adapt as a project and become something which I think is more well-rounded really, going forward. So it's exciting times.
GEMMA:
So I think social enterprises are so good at this. We're able to pivot.
KATIE:
We couldn't exist as Little Lounge without our volunteers. At the moment everybody is voluntary, like even myself. So over the next twelve months we're looking to get funding for salaries, until we can get our café up and running and then we're going to start to generate our own income. But for the past five years we've been completely voluntary run, and I just think that is testimony to the power of local volunteers.
They see a need and because they're invested in that community or you know whatever the community is, it doesn't have to be a geographical place does it? But when volunteers are invested and see a need, then they're willing to give up their time and their resources and we could not exist without those people.
GEMMA:
Yeah. Kelly will you be using volunteers? [Unclear 00:12:37] or?
KELLY:
No. So it will be Jamie and I initially running things but we are looking to draft in other mental health trainers. Do you know what, who knows what's going to happen? We've had so many people contacting us saying 'How can I get on board?' So we are looking at qualifying some veterans that have approached us to deliver some training for us in the future. So yeah, so we have got plans to bring other people on board.
GEMMA:
You just pivoted into where I wanted to end this conversation. It's really important to me that you guys get something out of this. And here's your opportunity to ask the audience. So everyone that's listening, Kelly and Katie are doing some incredibly important stuff and impact in their communities. So Kelly just said there that she will be looking out, looking for people, so if we just lead on from that, what do you want from this audience Kelly?
KELLY:
So to anybody that's listening, if you come across any funding opportunities you think 'Ah you know that would be perfect for YourNorth Veteran Support' please point them in our direction. Or if you or your organisation would like to sponsor some places on our courses so that we can carry on providing free mental wellbeing training we would be forever grateful.
And also collaborations. If something's resonated what I said today with you and you think do you know what, we could partner up with them, let's connect because we are open, keen and excited so yes.
GEMMA:
Good stuff. And how can they get in touch with you Kelly?
KELLY:
Our website is www.yournorth.co.uk And our Facebook is /yournorthuk and twitter is @yournorth_
GEMMA:
There we go. Katie what is your ask of the audience and anyone who's listening to this podcast? How can they contribute to your mission?
KATIE:
I think really we want to get our socials up and running. Our Facebook is really strong, our Facebook is /pontylittlelounge but we want to really kind of try and get our twitter and our Instagram just a bit more following, a bit more buzz about it.
Like you know tag us in things, anything to do with early years, anything to do with family wellbeing. So we're @littleloungeRCT on twitter and we're pontylittlelounge on insta. And so if you can follow us and share the stuff we're doing that'd be great.
GEMMA:
There we go. Two incredible women doing very much needed and important work in the South Wales Valley area. Honoured to meet you today girls. We're all in this UnLtd family now and I'll be a champion of yours going forward. So thank you very much for your time.
KELLY:
Aw thank you, thank you for your time as well.
KATIE:
Thanks for having us, Bye.
GEMMA:
So there you go. There's just two examples of the great work being done with the support of UnLtd in the South Wales Valley and a very clear ask from both. Let's make an impact, let's make our communities more resilient and let's support these social enterprises. Thank you very much for listening. I've been Gemma Hallett.
[MUSIC]
ALEX:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Changing Places, a podcast created by UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs. We find, fund and support individuals to make a difference in the UK. This support includes grants and investment, one-to-one coaching and mentorship opportunities.
We carry out research, tell stories of social entrepreneurs and their impact and influence policy makers to create a supportive world for the incredible work of social entrepreneurs. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed to this episode. To find out more about the organisations you heard simply have a look at the show notes.
For more information about Resilient Communities Project and the other programmes we deliver to support social entrepreneurs can be found at the UnLtd website. UnLtd.org.uk. Changing Places has been made possible thanks to the players of People's Postcode Lottery and is a MIC media production.
[MUSIC]
END
South Wales Valleys - September 1, 2021
Female-led social enterprises in the South Wales Valleys are thriving. Many of these are focused on mental wellbeing services, and others, such as MiFuture, are improving access to employment for young people.
Katie Hadley, founder of family and early-years support venture, Little Lounge, shares how they transformed their community space to meet the changing needs of local people during the pandemic.
And, YourNorth, a veteran support venture, is just about to launch. Kelly Farr talks about the founders’ lived experiences that inspired it.
Find out more
Changing Places
September 15, 2021
Dundee - September 15, 2021
Transcript - Changing Places: Episode 3 - Dundee
[MUSIC]
ALEX:
You don't have to look far to find people with innovation, passion and community trust. They're the ones who are working hard to respond to the challenges faced by local people. In this Changing Places podcast, you'll hear from local people from across the UK who are creating solutions to local issues.
I'm Alex from UnLtd, the folks behind this podcast. I'm from Stoke and I work with resilient communities in North Staffordshire. I'll be the one taking you on this journey. In each episode you'll visit a different local community in the UK to hear how they're changing their part of the world for the better.
In this episode we're in Dundee in Scotland with social entrepreneur Andrew Batchelor who lives and breathes Dundee, so much so he's dedicated his professional life to promoting the city through his social enterprise Dundee Culture. It's a social media brand that showcases Dundee to the world.
Coming up, Andrew speaks to fellow social entrepreneurs Danielle de Plooy from Uppertunity, a social enterprise for adults with additional needs and John Alexander from the innovative organisation Alexander Community Development. They talk about how they're contributing to Dundee's bright future. But first, Andrew tells you why he's Dundee's number one fan.
ANDREW BATCHELOR:
Hello listeners. I'm Andrew Batchelor and today we're in my amazing home city of Dundee, Scotland. Dundee, well where can I start? What an incredible little city which sits on the banks of the River Tay in the north east of Scotland. They say that the city has a Goldilocks effect. It's not too big, it's not too small. It's a city that is just the perfect size.
A city that has a population of 149,000 and it's a city that is going through quite a lot of nice and incredible changes. Once a city known for jam and journalism, now it's turned into a city of art, design and culture. We're the UK's first UNESCO city of design. We're home to Scotland's first design museum, the V&A Dundee and we've created amazing things that have contributed so much to life around the world in terms of design.
We created Grand Theft Auto which is one of the best video games of all time and we have also created The Dandy, Oor Wullie and of course The Beano, all comic books with The Beano being one of the best-selling comic book series of all time.
Dundee is a city that has contributed so much to health and science. We became the first place in the world to effectively eliminate Hepatitis C and also discovered breakthroughs and ways to stave off Covid-19.
But what makes Dundee one of the best places in the world to me, and one of the best places to live in Scotland? The people. I say you should never underestimate a Dundonian because the people who have been born here, who have lived here and who have contributed to Dundee, both past and present, are incredible, bright, smart and awesome.
And even now there are people in Dundee doing incredible things and the community spirit that Dundee has is fantastic. And don't just take my word for it. Take it from a local Dundonian, Dundee street poet Gary Robertson.
GARY ROBERTSON:
What does Dundee mean to me? I would never leave. I just love it. The history, the rough edges, but mainly the people. The people are incredible, so friendly, always glad to hear a laugh and really welcoming people into this city.
There's a lot of creative people in the town doing music, writing, art so it's great to encourage them and especially the young’uns. Just to say get up there, if you enjoy doing something, whether it's writing, poetry, football, dancing, whatever. Go for it.
ANDREW:
What a great example of a Dundonian like Gary, very passionate about where they come from. Thank you Gary. There's a great load of community spirit that we have here in Dundee and there is many great examples of these who have made an impact and today you'll hear from two of them. John Alexander and Danielle De Plooy.
John Alexander runs Alexander Community Development which was set up in 2020 and during the Covid-19 pandemic he has showed his community spirit by helping out individuals and groups with food packages. He also helps introduce youngsters into the trade of painting and directing with his other social enterprise Alexander Painter and Decorators which he set up in 2002.
The first thing I wanted to ask you is how did you start Alexander Community Development, where did it come from?
JOHN ALEXANDER:
It started with my own journey as a young apprentice. And I think it's great to give back and just to help others and to me, giving somebody the chance is better than any money. It's just, it's a great feeling. It's just something if they come across a barrier and kind of seeing them work it out it gives me just a great pleasure.
From that I worked on how I could expand into helping, not just young people get into the building trade but start to help to mould the people who maybe retired from the building trades maybe a bit early and that have suffered some mental health issues but still had a lot to give, and that was the main reason for Alexander Community Development.
ANDREW:
Obviously during the pandemic we've had a lot of people who have went out and did a lot of good stuff for the community and obviously you are a good example of somebody from Dundee who has stepped forward and helped others. So, what kinds of things have you done during the pandemic, just to get a bit more insight?
JOHN:
Once Covid happened and the lockdown kicked in, I started helping some of the local food banks myself. And myself and Carol, the centre manager, and that's where I kind of seen, logistics to me, because I've been in trades and I've organised staff for a lot of years and I have a health and safety background, I started putting a wee system in place with the food security networks.
And there's 25 local food banks who led with Dundee city council. A lot of these are volunteer staff and, I put a wee, just a wee structure in place and we become the distribution centre and from basically March last year to now just 500,000, half a million pounds worth of food has went through our doors. We support the groups with, we store, it's basically the food hub.
We're delivering PPE, we give the food banks an equal share of the food that's supplied from Dundee City Council. And it's great to see, what Dundee's done is brilliant, it's just great and it brings a smile to my face all the time. No one in the region, we have these food banks, just how they've all mucked in together. People that were furloughed have been helping out and a lot of the volunteers has been struggling themselves but they're going the extra mile there.
I think if Covid has given gave us anything, it gave us our communities back. And for a lot of people it's been a challenge, and I think there's a bigger challenge with mental health issues to come out of this but it's been a pleasure to be a part of helping others and being able to do something that to me was so simple Andrew but it was great for others. It makes me smile.
ANDREW:
Yeah that's lovely and I think what you're doing with the community is absolutely inspiring and it's brilliant. And what ambitions for the future do you have with Alexander Community Development and what do you hope to see maybe post pandemic?
JOHN:
We've actually put in planning permission for a building which is coming in at about 1.6 million and we're looking, this will be a huge training centre that will continue to help with the food distribution and will continue, as COVID kind of ends we should be going into more health and safety advice for the groups.
But we're looking just to grow Alexanders Community Development. We believe that this same model should be moved to Glasgow, Edinburgh. We're in talks with someone down in England way, also in Wales. Actually the chap in Wales is another UnLtd award winner. My ambition is to grow this. Get the model right. Build the building. Get it in other areas, helping others.
ANDREW:
That's a brilliant ambition. I really hope that that comes to fruition and it is brilliant.
JOHN:
I believe that everybody, that we all have some self-doubt, but I think if we could, I kind of always talk about when you walk past a beautiful garden, all these beautiful gardens had weeds. And that's the same with our thoughts. We've got negative thoughts. We've got to chip away at the weeds in our minds, our negative thoughts, get them out and then grow. Everything is possible.
I think everybody should do the same. The logo for Alexander Community Development is No problems, Only Solutions. And I think when you sit down you can get around anything and together, the more people who are doing great things, the better it is. Bringing a smile to other people's faces.
One of the things Andrew that always, when we're on holiday we seem to say 'Good morning, afternoon' to people. How do we not do it here? I know it's cold in the mornings up in Dundee but if somebody just went 'Good Morning' it's just quite a simple thing and with a little traction we could change the world. Yeah.
ANDREW:
Thanks John. Now we talk to Danielle de Plooy who's a manager of Uppertunity, a local and non-profit organisation from Dundee. I'd like to first ask you what is Uppertunity and what is your role involved in doing Uppertunity?
DANIELLE:
I will try to keep it short because sometimes I can waffle on a bit. And Uppertunity is a social enterprise that I founded along with my husband in 2015. We're a registered Community Interest Company which is basically, our assets and our profits are locked. We work with individuals with additional needs, autism and mental health barriers.
I think a lot of people maybe misunderstand or aren't aware with social enterprises and that's why we wanted to be registered as a social enterprise. To kind of change the way people view charities, the way people view businesses and we saw social enterprises kind of in between, where we want to be able to be sustainable long term.
Sometimes we have ideas which is brilliant but we also need to think about how they're going to sustain themselves because it's all good if we have ideas and we make a difference, but if we only have an impact for maybe six months or a year and then your project finishes after that it can have a bit of a detrimental impact on people when you've given them a bit of something and then it can't last.
So we offer a range of services that is all about empowering and giving purpose to these individuals. We do this with creative weekly groups. Online support. We have a safe training café in the city centre and we have a gardening programme and we're just busy launching an advanced creative skills programme.
ANDREW:
So that's brilliant and you talked there about people who have got autism and other disabilities. This inspiration of wanting to help others, the reason why you wanted to create it, how did it all come about?
DANIELLE:
Yeah that was the whole reason why we started it, was to provide support. Personal reasons as well. I grew up with a brother and cousins with autism and we often found that there's still a lot of segregation. It's a lot better now. And then I worked as a support worker and I found that a lot of the individuals that I was working with had so much talent and so much to bring, but it was just being wasted. Maybe not wasted but it wasn't being used.
So I thought, 'Right we need to do something about this'. It took a while 'cos things don't just happen but it was a lot of research and a lot of collaborating. A lot of community work. And that's one of the things I learned throughout Uppertunity is community is so important, and working together. Everything that we do is trying to provide a platform that will help someone's capabilities and someone's inner strength really shine bright.
ANDREW:
That's great. So UnLtd have helped you with this. What was it like going to them, what was the stages like to become eventually an award winner with UnLtd?
DANIELLE:
It was kind of at the beginning stages we met with them and they understood my passion, they understood our vision. We were very honest. We said, 'We've got a space, we've got this idea, however I need to be able to also have a fund and have a wage otherwise how are we going to survive, 'cos if not I'm going to have to work somewhere else'.
They were really supportive and they were the first ones to give us a fund, they actually gave us a wage which is quite a difficult thing to come by. So that gave us that extra breathing space, that massive breathing space that I could just concentrate on developing the programmes, developing the groups and just make the magic happen.
And then we got additional sort of little pots here and there that would cover outings and the cooking materials and the art materials and things and with that, 'cos we had it for a year, we were able to evaluate and record what we were doing and with that we were then able to apply for a larger fund that would cover the gross of the business.
I think if we didn't have it, who knows where we would be, but it really helped us just to focus and give us the time to record and evaluate and experiment, to then move onto the bigger projects.
ANDREW:
What are the bigger projects?
DANIELLE:
Obviously right now it's a little bit different. We're not at our full capacity. Before, and when we do hopefully go back to some normality, we have, one of our projects is called Weekly Warriors. So we have about ten workshops in that which includes creative art group, jewellery making, sewing group and we started a cooking skills group. We have a life skills programme, we're busy adapting that as well.
So it's just about giving someone a starting step to be able to live independently and how to socialise safely, to understand if someone's maybe abusing you in some way and then our café, called Serendipities. We have our training programme which is that, where individuals volunteer.
And we've got Upmix, yes that's our most recent project that we're working on. This is more specialised skills where we're trying to push skills a bit more with creative ways, so learning how to upcycle things, make things, woodwork, help them find either work with us or future jobs.
ANDREW:
It's good to get an insight about what you do and it's really exciting to see the projects that help others in the community. How has the pandemic affected Uppertunity and your work personally?
DANIELLE;
Yes, it's really affected us quite a lot. The whole reason why we started was to help people and what we found was the actual interaction and having a base and having a purpose really, really made a difference. So as soon as that was taken away, we had to think about how we were going to engage with people but we found that we had to start from scratch when our individuals came back and our volunteers returned.
You're just out of the loop and when you're in a routine you find ways to manage your anxiety. For example, some individuals took ages to get out of the house and we finally got them here and interacting and it was brilliant and then lockdown happened and it just shook everyone and we kind of had to start again.
So in one way the pandemic has really shown us, and funders, and the community of how important it is to be part of a community and how important it is to have that space that's yours. We're looking forward to a bit of normality and working with our guys, you can't beat that.
But we have adapted in other ways. Our café managed to stay open. We've had to close a little bit and reduce that. Our volunteers are still helping in every way that we possibly can but still keep everyone safe. And the biggest way we've adapted is online videos and online support and it's just creating stuff that people can do at home, fun things, focusing on mental health, yoga.
It's more so for people to see, 'My group's still there, there's someone thinking about me, I'm not just forgotten about'. We want to show that our members are still at the forefront of our brains and our minds. We're thinking about you every day and that's the only way we can possibly do it at the moment.
ANDREW:
Thank you very much for that Danielle and I'm glad I got the opportunity to talk to you about this.
[MUSIC]
ANDREW
Thank you so much to John and Danielle, two great examples of people in Dundee making an amazing impact and difference to our community. Individuals like John and Danielle is the reason that Dundee is the place that it is. I'm Andrew Batchelor and thank you for listening to the Dundee episode of the Changing Places Resilient Communities podcast.
ALEX:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Changing Places, a podcast created by UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs. We find, fund and support individuals to make a difference in the UK. This support includes grants and investment, one-to-one coaching and mentorship opportunities.
We carry out research, tell stories of social entrepreneurs and their impact and influence policy makers to create a supportive world for the incredible work of social entrepreneurs. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed to this episode. To find out more about the organisations you heard simply have a look at the show notes.
More information about the Resilient Communities project and the other programmes we deliver to support social entrepreneurs can be found at the UnLtd website. UnLtd.org.uk. Changing Places has been made possible thanks to the players of People's Postcode Lottery and is a MIC media production.
[MUSIC]
END
Dundee - September 15, 2021
Explore the rich history of Dundee through the eyes of proud Dundonian Andrew Batchelor, founder of Dundee Culture.
We find out how a background in the building trade helped John Alexander distribute £500,000 worth of food to the local community, when the pandemic placed pressure on access to essentials.
Hear how Danielle Gaffney du Plooy continued to facilitate skills-learning and safeguarding training for young people living with disabilities during the pandemic.
Find out more
Changing Places
September 29, 2021
North Staffordshire - September 29, 2021
Transcript - Changing Places: Episode 4 - Staffordshire
[MUSIC]
ALEX:
You don't have to look far to find people with innovation, passion and community trust. They're the ones who are working hard to respond to the challenges faced by local people. In this Changing Places podcast, you'll hear from local people from across the UK who are creating solutions to local issues.
I'm Alex from UnLtd, the folks behind this podcast. I'm from Stoke and I work with resilient communities in North Staffordshire. I'll be the one taking you on this journey. In each episode you'll visit a different local community in the UK to hear how they're changing their part of the world for the better.
In this episode we're in Staffordshire, the place not only I call home but so does Fiona Wood. It's also the place where she's based her social enterprise called It's All About Me which is about using photography, film, online platforms and art to create positive change in the community.
Creativity and entrepreneurship is simply in the DNA of North Staffordshire and now it's the turn of local social entrepreneurs who are reclaiming this space. So, coming up, Fiona talks to Chris Parr from The Stoke 2000 project and Anna Francis from The Portland Inn Project about their creative enterprises. But first Fiona tells you why she's rooting for Stoke-on-Trent.
FIONA WOOD:
Hi, I'm Fiona. Stoke-on-Trent has had its fair share of public sector cuts and also has ongoing social challenges. However we are fighting back with our cultural offering, innovation and enterprise. Stoke-on-Trent has a collective of socially minded activists who are using innovative ways to rebuild our communities, supporting each other, creating our own solutions with passion, creativity and kindness. Using our skills and talents to create change.
And I am so proud to be one of these social entrepreneurs, helping to create that change in Stoke-on-Trent today. Like myself, many of North Staffordshire's social entrepreneurs are using art and creativity to address local issues and build resilient communities. Art allows our imagination to be more vibrant, it creates excitement and new ways of thinking.
My social enterprise focuses on teaching photography and filmmaking to communities in North Staffordshire. Most people find it hard to verbalise their feelings or the challenges that they face, but photography and filmmaking helps them to visually explain their needs and ideas for change in their communities.
In this episode I'm going to introduce you to two more social enterprises who are both using creativity to solve social problems. First is Chris from The Stoke 2000 project, his grassroots workshop helps communities to learn about Stoke-on-Trent's ceramics past whilst teaching them the skills to recycle something that they would have normally thrown away.
Later on in the episode I'll speak to Anna Francis, an artist who runs The Portland Inn project. She tells you how she's building a community hub come creative studio come shop to engage and upskill her community, boost employability and regenerate her local area.
Through our arts and creative based social enterprises we have seen communities grow in understanding of themselves and their area. They now believe that they do have a voice and that they are being listened to. So without further ado let's say hello to Chris Parr.
CHRIS PARR:
I'm Chris Parr, an UnLtd Award Winner and social entrepreneur from North Staffordshire.
FIONA:
Your social enterprise is The Stoke 2000 project. What does that do Chris?
CHRIS:
The Stoke 2000 is a community recycling project making garden wall planters out of pallet wood in the shape of the iconic pottery's bottle oven. The number 2000 was the number of kilns built across the city in the heyday of the pottery industry.
With the instruction of the Clean Air Act in 1956 it saw the end of the kilns as the factories turned towards using more greener fuel such as gas and electricity. Today there are less than 50 still standing across the city and they're all listed buildings.
We have the support of local people from community groups and schools to make the kilns as well as businesses through their donations of unwanted pallet wood. We make different versions of planter from the recycled pallets. These include our classic versions, bird feeders, insect hotels and even bird boxes.
We're also working with local artists making an art trail of the bottle ovens across the city centre. It's a great side project that gives local people and those visiting the city a brief insight into the area's history. In this case we're using art to tell the story of the city.
FIONA:
How is the project financially sustainable then?
CHRIS:
Part of the project sees the sale of the bottle oven planters directly to the public on our website and during local markets.
FIONA:
Why did you set up The Stoke 2000?
CHRIS:
It was set up to work with young people and community groups and use my experience as a carpenter to pass my skills on to them. The focus was more to do with participation, co-creation, and placemaking in addition to the sales. In fact I've just completed a leadership course at Staffordshire University called Create Place and the term for this is called Culture 3.0. In simple terms it means involving more people in cultural activities.
FIONA:
How has the Stoke 2000 project been received by the community?
CHRIS:
The feedback from the project has been very positive, from the young people in schools and older people who volunteer. So for example a year six student told her parents that she'd loved every minute of an after school club activity and she felt lucky to be chosen to be part of the project.
Also the parent of an NHS keyworker said during a workshop it's the highlight of his week. It must give him a timetable to look forward to and something that helps reduce loneliness and social isolation.
FIONA:
You’ve told us about the social impact, but what about the environmental impact Chris?
CHRIS:
Recycling enough pallets to make the 2000 planters, we worked out it saves local businesses and the city council more than 37.6 tons of carbon emissions. Basically it's the same as watching TV for nearly 50 years, charging 5,000,000 smart phones or driving over 90,000 miles in a car. In other words, travelling around the equator 3.7 times.
FIONA:
And finally Chris, what does the future look like for Stoke 2000?
CHRIS:
The venture will continue to celebrate heritage through recycling in the city of Stoke-on-Trent but we're also looking at expanding across North Staffordshire and inspiring more people across the UK to get involved with our cultural activities. I'm going to keep on making a positive impact on the environment by working with other communities to recycle pallet wood and hopefully leave a legacy with other people to tackle climate change.
So just like Bilbo Baggins I'm going on a journey, or an adventure. I've already pencilled in visiting the other resilient communities of Brighton and Hove, Dundee and the South Wales Valleys to make similar heritage products. I have some fantastic new ideas and I'm so looking forward to the next few years and can't wait to get on the make.
FIONA:
Thanks Chris, you'll find the links to Chris' work in the show notes. Now, continuing the theme of creativity in Stoke I speak to Anna Francis online about The Portland Inn project.
ANNA FRANCIS:
Hello everyone. Thanks for the introduction Fi. I'm Anna Francis. I am an artist based in Stoke-on-Trent and I'm also an associate professor of Fine Art and Social Practice at Staffordshire University.
FIONA:
Can you tell us a little bit about your project? So I understand it's in the area that you live in?
ANNA:
Yeah that's right. So the project that I'm going to talk about today is The Portland Inn project. I moved into the area in 2014, being one of those lucky £1 home owners and one of the things that we agreed to do as £1 home owners was to contribute to community life. Because the reason the £1 home scheme happened in the first place is that the area was quite run down.
Actually, in the area that I've now moved into there was just lots of boarded up houses and people living next door to really derelict properties. I moved in in 2014 and immediately started thinking about how we as a family could contribute to community life. We're both artists and as artists I think we have quite a range of skills that can really support communities.
There's still really a lot to be done in terms of community infrastructure because the shop, the community centre and the pub were still boarded up so there was nowhere really for the community to meet.
Although the community had been through quite a difficult time because of the regeneration schemes, they'd still managed to host community activity through this, what they called Bring a Plate where everyone would bring a plate of something out of their homes and it would become a community meal.
So my project was to try to create this plate and we learnt really quickly that although it's a nice idea to create a community ceramic it wasn't necessarily what the community needed. So very quickly the priority for the project sort of shifted and at the end of 2015 I was busy trying to make that known to the council who I was working with and at the same time another artist who had come to the area, Rebecca Davies, with what was basically a pop-up social club and they told her the same thing, we need this social club to be permanent.
And so both of our projects were really finding this expressed need from the community for a space of our own. So the council said to us, 'We've got this empty pub and you're telling us that the community wants a space. Can you test out whether or not this pub would work and can you prove to us that you can set up a viable community led space?'
So in 2016, having never worked together before, Rebecca and I applied for an Arts Council application and we put that in to be able to run a programme over four weeks, just to really test can this derelict pub become something that is really needed and wanted by the community?
We ran a programme of around 53 activities over the four weeks. But each week we kind of had a question that we were asking. Questions like 'Who wants to be involved in renovating this pub?', 'what can it be?' and 'how do we make this happen?'. And all of those questions and all of the activity was informing a business plan that we were working on.
So at the end of that year we handed over the business plan to the council evidencing the community need and also how we were going to deliver the project. We'd never written a business plan before and the council said it was one of the most creative business plans they'd ever seen. We handed it in at the end of 2016 and it wasn't actually until May 2018 that it finally went to cabinet and the asset transfer was agreed.
So we were doing work still in the area between those times because the area, in 2017 we had a lot of problems with anti-social behaviour. So back in 2017 we also started a sort of communities and services monthly meeting that various services, who support areas across Stoke-on-Trent, meet with our community members to look at what the priorities are and then be able to sort of very quickly target resources.
Working with partners like the council, the local policing teams, the sort of local matters teams. That's meant that we're able to focus on the creative side of things and the programming and bring in the experts to deal with some of the issues that we don't have the expertise in as artists.
So we had the asset transfer agreed in 2018 and at that point we were able to start actually thinking about what this building would look like and how it would be developed. Back in 2018 the building was no longer habitable because there was a massive hole in the roof. Our architect Godson Egbo came and worked with our community members to redesign the building. And we got planning permission in December 2020.
In between we applied for a really exciting programme called Creative Civic Change which is run by the Local Trust and Gulbenkian Foundation and Esmée Fairbairn. We are really pleased to be one of 16 areas across the UK who are using creativity to really think about making positive change with our community and that's enabled us to think about all the bits that aren't the building.
We've been able to really think about a really good skills development program for our area which will contribute to making sure that our project can be sustainable longer term. So, for example, one of the things we did last October was launch what we see as the sort of social enterprise side of things for our project. We launched the Portland Pigeon.
I mentioned there was a massive hole in the roof of The Portland Inn and this has been our approach really. We'll kind of look at a sort of need and then we'll think about how we can creatively deal with that need. So we need to fix that hole in the roof, so what if the tile that we create has a pigeon on it, so it's a decorative tile?
This is something that will practically deal with the issue that we have but then longer term perhaps these pigeon ridge tiles are something that we can sell. And in October we had like an online launch and sale and we sold out of those pigeons in two hours which was really, really good and sort of tells us that actually there is a market for some of the creative ceramic wares.
And this is the side of it where our community can learn new skills in ceramics and we hope that longer term this will lead to employment for community members and also will continue to bring this important cash injection into the project, making it sustainable long term. I guess we just really care a lot about the area.
FIONA:
That's absolutely brilliant. I was just wondering, you've got all these projects going on. How hard has it been to get the community to be involved in them?
ANNA:
At first, there was quite a bit of resistance to people from the £1 home scheme coming in and trying to kind of do things. Because people were, you know I think rightly annoyed about the situation that had happened and also suspicious because you're talking about change, but will there be any change?
So what we realised very quickly was that actually the activity that we would do would need to have impact and be beneficial in its own right. So even if the only thing that ever happens is this session, then at least people have experienced something and there's been some kind of exchange and recognition actually of peoples' time.
Being a resident, as well as being an artist, people get to see you and see that you're there every Sunday for the gardening club, sort of digging and putting plants in or you're there sort of running regular activity and I think start to, over time, get to know you and get to sort of understand what you're doing, and why you're doing it and then want to be involved.
FIONA:
That's actually really interesting and sort of bringing in to talking a bit about the impact.
ANNA:
So over the years I think there's been quite significant impact. I think the arts over the years has been sort of undervalued really and understanding of what artists bring to social situations has been underreported and under captured. So I think that's really important that we do that.
For example, back in 2017 when the community had completely stopped using the green space and then by the end of the summer it had been sort of reclaimed by the community. So just by being there, making that community activity happen, we were able to push back on some of that really negative activity that was happening.
And one of the other things that's been really important has been around, and I don't really like these sort of jargon words, community cohesion and that sort of thing. It's about togetherness and making space for people, the community, to get together and get to know each other has been really important.
And I think The Portland Inn project has been able to do that. It's a space where everyone gets together, eats together, makes together, talks to each other and we can find the things that, you know, connect us and we can talk through the things that we perhaps disagree on.
We have quite high levels of wellbeing needs. We know locally that there's sadly quite low levels of educational attainment and I think that stems from perhaps not having a love of learning and I think what we've been able to provide over the years is an alternative space for learning.
So kind of finding a love of creative making and learning new skills in quite an informal way has been really beneficial and you know people have started to build confidence in themselves and build self-esteem. And so, you know, community members have told us, 'you know I was in a really foul mood and then I came down here and now I feel really so much calmer and so much happier'.
We're really pleased to be able to be making that kind of contribution for, you know, people to just start to feel part of something.
FIONA:
That's great. So what are your future plans?
ANNA:
So what we're working on right now is getting the funding in place for the building. And we've got about a third of the funding that we need so we're really hopeful that by the middle of the year we'll be starting on that build and then sort of co-build the rest of the building together.
So we'll be, you know, using some of those ceramic skills that we've been picking up over the years and building skills to actually start to make the fixtures and fittings for the building. We're also contributing to some national conversations around some of the issues affecting communities.
So we can share our experience on Portland Street and help to set national priorities for communities. And I think that's really important as well. So while we have this really local focus where we're able to kind of really respond to local needs, we also ensure that we're part of national conversations that contribute the learning that we're doing there on a national scale. Yeah, there's quite a lot going on. [LAUGHS]
FIONA:
That's absolutely fabulous. There's so much happening in your area. I'd like to say thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today.
ANNA:
Great. Thanks Fi, it's lovely talking to you. Good luck. [LAUGHS]
FIONA:
Thank you very much. Thank you Anna and Chris. As you've heard today, North Staffordshire is being transformed by the vision of the community. This is being helped by UnLtd who are leading the resilient communities work which has helped us start that transformation. The work has been a catalyst to bring together groups of social entrepreneurs to look at creating collective change.
We will make sure it happens. Stoke-on-Trent will see the transformation with communities working together that will make the city thrive. We still have the pride from the past, we won't forget where we've come from, but we know where we're going.
Here in North Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent is on a journey of discovery, being led by social enterprise. We are making sure that people in our communities are at the forefront of making our city. My name is Fiona Wood and thank you for listening to this episode of the Resilient Communities podcast, a photographic snap of Stoke-on Trent.
ALEX:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Changing Places, a podcast created by UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs. We find, fund and support individuals to make a difference in the UK. This support includes grants and investment, one-to-one coaching and mentorship opportunities.
We carry out research, tell stories of social entrepreneurs and their impact, and influence policy makers to create a supportive world for the incredible work of social entrepreneurs. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed to this episode. To find out more about the organisations you heard simply have a look at the show notes.
More information about the Resilient Communities project and the other programmes we deliver to support social entrepreneurs can be found at the UnLtd website. UnLtd.org.uk. Changing Places has been made possible thanks to the players of People's Postcode Lottery and is a MIC Media production.
[MUSIC]
END
North Staffordshire - September 29, 2021
What have the £1 homeowners brought to North Staffordshire, and what is the role of the Portland Pigeon?
Local social entrepreneurs work with their community to “tell the story of the city through art”, in Chris Parr of The Stoke 2000 project’s words. Upcycling and upskilling, they use creativity to improve access to employment and community togetherness in Stoke – reclaiming shared spaces to make them better serve the local people.
Find out more
Changing Places
October 13, 2021
Better Together - October 13, 2021
Transcript - Changing Places: Episode 5 - Better Together
[MUSIC]
ALEX PHILLIPS:
Hello and welcome to the final episode from this series of the Changing Places podcast. I'm your host Alex and for this episode we're bringing back our podcasting resilient community changemakers. We hope to inspire you and your community to take the steps to create positive local action in your communities.
So, what better way to top the series off than to bring you a bunch of brilliant people who, day in, day out, strive to make their communities amazing places. And we asked them their top practical insights into achieving positive grassroots change. First up we bring together Joel Essex and Chris Parr.
Joel featured in our Brighton episode. He leads the BrightStore, a community based affordable food scheme. Then there's Chris. He's from The Stoke 2000. He was profiled in the North Staffordshire episode. He makes planters from recycled pallets.
Together they reckon a great place to start is by communities coming together to share resources. Like Joel's partners who cook hot meals for their customers. And Chris's business pals who provide the pallets for his community projects. I'll let Chris and Joel tell you more.
JOEL ESSEX:
Hi my name's Joel Essex from BrightStore.
CHRIS PARR:
And hi my name's Chris from The Stoke 2000.
JOEL:
Really I suppose the question is how does the idea of sharing resources within a community sort of feed into the ethos of The Stoke 2000?
CHRIS:
I've got a lot of skills, in carpentry especially and it's important to pass skills on to others. With my project it's about making planters and other products for garden spaces and to recycle pallet wood. So as long as you're passing those skills on to others and providing opportunities for young people to train but also for community groups to do the same, then hopefully that'll move towards further employment opportunities.
So with yourself Joel, how does sharing skills fit in with your project?
JOEL:
Well I guess with it being sort of food based I always think the positive aspect of food is that it's something that's shared or that it's at its best when it's shared. So that's quite a good starting point to working in a sort of community food project because that idea of sharing I think is quite integral to food being a positive thing.
With us there's lots of other resources that we share. So to give a practical example, we're based in two community centres in the city and in one of them there are two sort of food services, we work really closely with them.
So there's a project called The World Food Project which is run by two people who cook hot meals for people who don't get the opportunity or haven't got the resources to cook and eat nutritious meals. And they will often share those meals for our project and we can provide those to people who use us as well as our fresh fruit and veg and stuff that we have at our store.
So I think that's the thing. The more you can sort of share stuff, the stronger those projects can be and the stronger and more resilient those communities you work in can be I guess.
CHRIS:
Now what I like about your project, it's not just about the resources at the end Joel, I think it's that knowledge of how to grow certain vegetables and herbs and fruits because there is a lot of skills and knowledge that people have that they can pass onto other people there.
JOEL:
We've started to sort of do this, work with local allotments and local growers so people that use or shop at our store can then have the resources to be able to learn to grow stuff like you said. That's a great example of sort of sharing resources.
The skillsets some our allotment holders have got in those communities that we operate can be shared with some of our members and I think that can only be a good thing for the sort of longevity of the project really.
CHRIS:
It's about local businesses to support my project especially. I mean I'm working with local businesses that have got waste products in the case of pallet wood and I work with volunteers to build these products from the waste. So in terms of a circular economy that's a good story.
JOEL:
Is that sort of a difficult process?
CHRIS:
They love the idea that I'm using some of their waste and creating things and products that bring communities together and upskill people and share those skills. Whether that's young people in schools or people in community groups.
JOEL:
I wondered if you'd noticed a sort of change in any attitudes towards the sort of idea of community and sharing resources as a result of Covid or what people have been through in the last year?
CHRIS:
Yeah, I've especially seen changes towards their attitudes and behaviours in the actual local environment. I've seen lots of people do new activities like running around their community where there's some green space to keep fit. You know it's important for their health and wellbeing.
But also their attitudes to their own place. Where they either live or work. So the introduction of garden planters in their backyards for example or community spaces, whether that's the high street or other places that, you know, bring communities together.
JOEL:
Yeah I think that's definitely the case. That people have had that time to think a little bit more about wider issues. I've definitely noticed in some communities where we operate, where you give people the opportunity to come together, and I use the sort of supermarket as a model, when I think about the experience that people get when they come and use our service or store, how different that is to a supermarket.
What we kind of do is a very social, empowering thing. It connects people with people who grow food locally. It's a much more sort of positive, empowering experience for people. People can meet their neighbours, exchange ideas, share, you know, recipe ideas. All the sorts of things that you wouldn't normally think of doing when you go to the supermarket.
It's a monetary exchange isn't it? You're sort of there to do your shop and that's it and there's not that much engagement with the food or anything else. So I've definitely noticed that that's something that is definitely positive and hopefully it's something that will stay with people after the pandemic really.
CHRIS:
How are you going to build on this experience?
JOEL:
I think the idea is that we want to make it a bit more of a hub. So it's not just somewhere that people come to get their shopping. So things like doing some growing, seed swaps, that sort of thing.
I think that ability to spend more time with people, engage with people for a lot longer in a much more welcoming setting would be great. I think it is a model that is sustainable. It's something that's very much a really, really local community service. So hopefully it's here to stay.
CHRIS:
I've got a large project in a school. It's not just about building products. It's about teaching young people the heritage of Stoke-on-Trent. Leaving that legacy with the young people but also work with community groups and more volunteers where they can jump on and learn new skills and carpentry especially.
JOEL:
Yeah that'd be great to increase that sort of face to face time and engage with other people isn't it? There's no kind of substitute for that.
CHRIS:
Yeah. That's right.
JOEL:
Well it's great speaking to you Chris. And best of luck with everything in the future.
CHRIS:
Yeah and you. I'd love to come down and visit Brighton at some point.
JOEL:
Oh you'd be more than welcome. We'll get you a BrightStore shopping bag and [LAUGHS] get you down.
ALEX:
Thanks guys. Some real practical examples there of how we can share resources in our communities. Not only that, how we can work together with more impact all for the common good. Working together has been so important over the last 18 months and as Chris and Joel mentioned there, the Covid crisis has changed our priorities, attitudes and needs in our communities and it's the pandemic that Gemma and Andrew talk about.
What's their advice for creating positive change in your communities? Gemma, you'll have heard in the Welsh Valleys episode. She runs miFuture which delivers career support for school leavers and young adults. And Andrew, he runs Dundee Culture who we featured in our, you guessed it, Dundee episode. His media company exists to showcase the Scottish city off to the world.
Gemma and Andrew don't want you to focus on the negative side of the pandemic. They think there's a real opportunity here to continue with all the good stuff and attitudes our communities have been generating over the last year or so. Why should this stop in a post-pandemic world? I'll let Gemma and Andrew take it from here.
ANDREW:
I think Dundee is a good place. It's got a lot of people in the community who have really been there for each other, especially during the pandemic. A lot of encouraging activity includes stuff like handing out food parcels or going to check up on people.
I was talking to Danielle de Plooy from Uppertunity, and that's a social enterprise that aims to help disabled people. It's really special and when I was talking to her about how the pandemic's been affecting the social enterprise she said, "We've had to move stuff online, we've had to close the actual space, it's been hard and people are still learning from like what they can do and adapt and really I mean we're always there for each other".
And I think talking with the millions who have done these incredible things, it just makes us come even stronger. Like hopefully once we come out of the pandemic it'll hopefully be better than ever. People looking out for each other, doing good things for the community. It'll benefit all and also we learn things from each other as well. I think those three points make up a resilient community from a Dundonian perspective.
GEMMA:
Yeah, yeah I totally agree from a Welsh Valleys' perspective. We've seen the importance of personal lived experience as a key driver, it's been an essential ingredient for success, particularly for women. It's the experiences that, you know, women in particular is helping to inform how services should be delivered better. And we've seen a lot, you know to pivot, exactly what you said, everything's online.
So you know we've gone from parent and toddler clubs to moving onto online kind of activities and food banks delivering, like cooking things online and, to be a social entrepreneur you have to be resilient anyway but to really see that thrive in our communities, and we're seeing a lot of partnerships develop as well.
Take one valley in particular, or one area in particular, in Caerphilly where UnLtd have teamed up with Welsh ICE which is a kind of start-up ecosystem. And originally we were heavy in the tech scene but, you know, they've dedicated a five to nine club for social entrepreneurs from the local communities and, you know, with that afterhours kind of block they've been able to really galvanise and be successful to learn how to pitch, how to work with others, how to raise funding.
I think they've raised over £20,000 between eight businesses. You know which didn't exist before so, you know it's not just showing we're resilient but we're thriving right now. It's a really exciting time.
ANDREW:
'Cos even when we have a lot of things going on which can be negative, there's always like a positive to it as well.
GEMMA:
'Cos I think it's really important that support should be based on what we see is missing from the current system. I think a lot of what social entrepreneurs are trying to do is fill a gap that isn't being provided by somebody else and then they become the leaders in that space then and then they should inform more wide assistance and support.
People in our communities are the ones who are doing it on the ground, making the impact and I really think that there's this momentum, this shift, you know social entrepreneurs being seen as the way these communities are going to be stronger. So we're not going to go back to the huge commute that we saw before and we're not going to travel en masse to cities.
The communities are going to need to rebuild and thrive and I think there's a real opportunity in that.
ALEX:
A big thanks to Gemma and Andrew where again we hear about togetherness being a common denominator in bringing about positive change at a community level. It's no surprise then, when we asked Fiona from It's All About Me her top tips for building a thriving social sector in your community, she tells you not to do it alone.
You'll remember Fiona from our North Staffordshire episode. Her social enterprise focuses on teaching photography and filmmaking to communities across the county. In the final part of this episode Fiona explains to you how her collective are working together to understand their communities better, build trust and co-design solutions to really address their local needs.
FIONA WOOD:
Our conversation started a few years ago, as a group of social enterprises coming together to support each other. Over the years some left and some people joined. This has led to the group we are now, working together to understand each other, the challenges faced by our local communities and how we as a group can tackle them.
Right now we're working with a social impact consultancy Noisy Cricket and UnLtd resilient communities. We have been exploring how our work can benefit our community and sharing some of the barriers we have had to overcome. Like trust in the community for example. We also have faced other difficulties such as significant expectations of our work, what are the advantages of local services or is there a need or acceptance for our help?
So working together has enabled us to start building trust and share our understanding of what good looks like. All this work we're doing is part of the wider community who are coming together as part of the journey for a brighter future. I value this togetherness allowing and mobilising grassroots action over the issues that they care about.
We are designing our ideas and beliefs with those involved by doing it. We are strengthening our impact by working together, with the same goals and vision. This is how we're building a thriving social sector in Stoke-on-Trent. My name is Fiona Wood and I am proud that I have a social enterprise in North Staffordshire.
ALEX:
Thanks for being so honest Fiona. That was a real insight into collaborative community action in North Staffordshire. So, you've travelled to resilient communities in the Welsh Valleys and Dundee. You've been to Brighton and visited North Staffordshire. You've heard from a bunch of incredible social entrepreneurs who live and breathe local change making.
The thread that's run through all of the people that you've heard from, it's togetherness. Whether that's pooling resources or money, sharing ideas or research, being a shoulder to cry on or something to cry laughing with. Resilient communities start and finish with the people who live, work and play within them and by coming together we can make them even better places to be.
I've been Alex Phillips and thank you for listening to Changing Places, a podcast created by UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs. We find, fund and support individuals to make a difference in the UK. This support includes grants and investment, one-to-one coaching and mentorship opportunities. We carry out research, tell stories of social entrepreneurs and their impact and influence policy makers to create a supportive world for the incredible work of social entrepreneurs.
More information about the resilient communities project and the other programmes we deliver to support social entrepreneurs can be found at the UnLtd website. Unltd.org.uk That's u-n-l-t-d.org.uk.
A big thank you to everyone who's contributed to this series especially our podcasters Joel, Brian, Fiona, Gemma, Chris and Andrew. They all planned and recorded almost all of the audio you hear in this series. So a massive well done.
Changing Places has been made possible thanks to players of People's Postcode Lottery and is a MIC Media production.
Better Together - October 13, 2021
Want to make positive change in your community and not sure where to start? Our social entrepreneurs share practical advice for those looking to create solutions to issues in their local community.
Tap into the local expertise that has helped these social entrepreneurs to create the lasting positive change their communities want to see.
Series 1
How Do You Solve a Problem Like..?
How Do You Solve a Problem Like..?
Are we facing a loneliness epidemic? How can the UK be struggling with both childhood obesity and hunger in our schools? What needs to change to stop knife crime?
We hear from those working on these challenges in “How Do You Solve A Problem Like..?”, documentary podcast series. Each episode features dedicated enterprising people who are using big ideas to tackle social challenges in innovative and unusual ways.
Social Entrepreneur in Residence, Milly Chowles, travels across the UK, meeting with these leaders of social change who have created remarkable ‘business for good’ ventures.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like..? - {date}
Hear from social entrepreneurs who are tackling social challenges in innovative and unusual ways.
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How Do You Solve a Problem like..?
March 25, 2019
Loneliness
Loneliness - March 25, 2019
How do you talk about tackling loneliness, when the word itself is taboo? Meet two entrepreneurs responding to this issue. Alex Smith, who won the Obama Fellowship Award for civic innovators in 2018 talks about his fight against loneliness and polarisation in the UK. Alex Hoskyn is the creator of Chatty Café, a brand new scheme that has already spread as far as Australia and Gibraltar and has the backing of mega high street chain Costa coffee.
Alex Smith - Cares Family
Alex Smith launched the Cares Family business in 2012 to fight against loneliness and polarisation in the UK, by connecting seniors and young professionals to build new and lasting relationships. In 2018 he won the Obama Fellowship Award for civic innovators, recognising him for working with communities to create transformational change. He is one of only 20 people selected from across the globe to be part of a two-year programme, designed to amplify the impact of their work and inspire a wave of civic innovation.
How You Can Help
- Donate to The Cares Family – in north London, south London, Manchester or Liverpool
- Join The Cares Family's gala
- Complete a challenge for The Cares Family – in north London, south London, Manchester or Liverpool
- Connect The Cares Family to your employer – in north London, south London, Manchester or Liverpool
Alex Hoskyn - Chatty Cafe
Alex Hoskyn is a part time Social Worker from Oldham. In 2017 she set up The Chatty Café Scheme which encourages cafes and other social settings to designate a Chatter & Natter table. This is where customers can sit if they are happy to talk to other customers. The aims of the scheme are to reduce loneliness and get people chatting.
How Do You Solve a Problem like..?
April 8, 2019
Youth Violence
Youth Violence - April 8, 2019
In the UK, there were 39,818 knife crime offences in the 12 months ending September 2018, according to BBC research. Yet the solutions proposed by politicians and in the media often stigmatise the neighbourhoods and victims. So how do you take on a problem that is taking lives? In this episode we meet with two people who have had real results in changing communities: Cherie White who created Think for the Future, and Eliza Rebeiro from Lives not Knives. We believe that those with first-hand experience of social issues have solutions to make change, and both Cherie and Eliza really use this principle in their incredible work with young people.
Eliza Rebeiro - Lives without Knives
Eliza founded the campaign in July 2007 at the age of 14. The toll of teenagers being stabbed due to youth crime and gang culture made an impact on her and others around her. The campaign started with just a t-shirt in bold print to make a statement – which read ‘LIVES NOT KNIVES’. This in turn led to organising an event with the money raised from the sale of the t-shirts in February 2008. Since then she has run many events about knife crime, been to No. 10 and moved towards supporting young people into education, employment and training.
Cherie White - Think for the Future
After her time on the Enactus programme, in 2012 she founded Think For The Future. They provide schools, teachers and disadvantaged communities with innovative solutions to remove barriers to their success, taking on pastoral and behavioural problems that are preventing participants from reaching their full educational potential. Cherie has worked with Save the Children on their new measurement and evaluation strategy as well as a Health Care Innovation Lead at GSK.
Footnotes
How Do You Solve a Problem like..?
April 23, 2019
Unhealthy Kids
Unhealthy Kids - April 23, 2019
When you hear “unhealthy kids”, what often jumps to mind are national headlines about childhood obesity. Yet with 30% of children in UK living in poverty, many kids are actually arriving at school hungry every day. These issues are very much connected. In this episode we meet two social entrepreneurs working in schools to tackle these issues, along with some of the students and teachers who are benefiting from their work.
Nathan Atkinson, a former headteacher, found that talking about saving the environment and recycling in schools had a surprising “stealth” impact on students’ health, tackling the 1.9 million tonnes of food waste in the UK along the way. We also meet with co-founder of Evolve, John Bishop, whose venture is improving kids’ physical, emotional and mental well-being with a truly innovative programme. The holistic approach they are using isn’t just making young people healthier, it’s improving self-esteem, reducing school exclusions, improving behaviour, and more. Plus we’re joined by UnLtd’s Josh Meek in the studio to chat about how and if it’s possible for people like Nathan and John to measure making impact on a whole society.
- Evolve
- Sustainable Education
- Rethink Economics
- "The Doughtnut Lady”, economics model
- Child Poverty Facts and Figures
- The Astonishing Scale of Food Waste in the UK and around the world
John Bishop, Evolve
John Bishop and Graham Morgan set up Evolve to provide health mentors to help children to succeed
and achieve their potential. Their work is bigger than education, or public health: it’s about
changing the way we support children by bringing together different organisations and people who are
responsible for childhood health: parents, schools, local authorities, community groups and policy
makers.
How you can help:
- If you are a school leader and interested in support from Evolve, anywhere in the UK, contact us via [email protected]
- If you are connected to any education, health or social care commissioners who would like to invest more effectively, please email [email protected]
- If you’d like to be in involved with their work on an employed, voluntary, or pro-bono basis contact us via [email protected] with how you can help.
Nathan Atkinson, Sustainable Education
Nathan is a former head teacher, based in Leeds, working with a former primary school teacher, to
change the way we talk about food. He has worked on many projects to end hunger – setting up
Fuel for School which delivers extra food to schools so that pupils eat well and do better. With the
Rethink Food they run campaigns in school to reduce plastic waste, and teach about the UN
sustainability goals – which actually changes the way kids and their parents shop and eat.
How Do You Solve a Problem like..?
July 16, 2019
Hygiene Poverty
Hygiene Poverty - July 16, 2019
One in ten girls or women aged 14 to 21 in Britain cannot afford sanitary towels or tampons, according to Plan International. Despite the serious consequences - from the impact on their dignity, to missing school and education, this issue was barely talked about only a few years ago. The good news is that now there are incredible entrepreneurs who say, “Period Poverty is a solvable issue.” We speak with Gabby Edlin and Celia Hobson from Bloody Good Period and Hey Girls, who are both making a difference to end period poverty, and the stigma associated with it.
- Amika George, Free Period Campaign
- Hey Girls
- Charity incubator, Centre For Innovation In Voluntary Action
- Red Box Project
- Bloody Good Period
- NCVO Income Spectrum Report
- Plan International UK Period Poverty Stats
Gabby Edlin – Bloody Good Period
Bloody Good Period was started by Gabby Edlin who decided something needed to be done about the fact
that very few food banks and asylum seeker drop-in centres were providing feminine hygiene products
on a regular basis - despite a desperate need. What started as a whip-round on Facebook is now a
growing enterprise with a vision to end period poverty.
Celia Hodson - Hey Girls
Hey Girls was founded by Celia Hodson and her daughters Becky and Kate, with the philosophy that
girls and young women should never have to compromise their wellbeing or their health. Having been a
single parent she understand firsthand the financial strain of buying sanitary protection when
struggling to survive on benefits. The situation for women hasn’t changed in twenty years,
which is why they set-up Hey Girls.
How Do You Solve a Problem like..?
July 30, 2019
Homelessness
Homelessness - July 30, 2019
Since 2010, homelessness has doubled in the UK. Now, over 4,000 people sleep rough every night. The problem is growing and many of us are motivated to help, but we just don’t know what to do. We speak to Meg and Cemal from Fat Macy’s and Change Please who are using delicious food and drink to provide a way out of homelessness – going well beyond providing people with jobs.
- Change Please
- Fat Macy's
- Ignition Brewery
- Riot Girl rock camp
- Bloody Good Period
- Statistics on Homelessness
Cemal Ezel – Change Please
Cemal is the co-founder of Change Please, a social enterprise which trains homeless people to become
baristas and helps them into onward employment. They have mobile coffee vans, located in London at
Borough Market, The Shard, Canary Wharf and Here East, and in many corporate premises in icluding
Virgin Unite and UBS. In 2017, they launched three varieties of Change Please coffee in 350
Sainsbury's stores across the UK. Cemal was voted Lloyd's Bank Social Entrepreneur of the
Year 2017, Natwest's SEUK Trailblazer Award 2017. They were awarded 'Best Coffee' at the
World Beverage Innovation Awards, and Change Please was listed as one of Marketing Week's Top
100 Most Disruptive Brands 2017. Cemal is also co-founder of The Coal Rooms and Aside, restaurants
in Peckham.
Meg Doherty - Hey Girls
Meg is the co-founder and CEO of Fat Macy’s, a roving restaurant that trains homeless
Londoners to run supper clubs, with profits going into a savings scheme helping them raise a deposit
for their first flat. Meg worked at the North London YMCA where she first developed Fat
Macy’s, and has worked with youth justice charity Only Connect.
Milly Chowles
Milly has eight years of professional experience as a radio and podcast producer. She is helping charities communicate more effectively with their supporters, and reach new ones, through bespoke high-quality podcasts. She uses the power of stories and the medium of audio as particularly impactful way to amplify the voices of marginalised people and to challenge stigma – and has started work on an UnLtd podcast.