Empowering Places
On 28th February and 1st March 2017, Power to Change and Homebaked brought together a contingent of community organisations from across the UK and Europe to share their experiences of operating community businesses at different stages of their journey.
Power to Change is an independent charitable trust, whose funding is used to strengthen community businesses across England. The Learning Grant is the first initiative of the Empowering Places programme - a targeted funding and support programme which focuses its efforts on specific neighbourhoods to nurture community business potential. This event marked the mid-way point of the Learning Grant Programme.
When we saw the tender for the delivery of the event last November, we applied with a proposal for the kind of event that we, as people working within a community business, would feel excited to go to.
Our aim was to create an event that addresses everyone involved as a learner and an expert, where the critical friends, storytellers and facilitators stay for the entire event to share their experience, where people get to listen to stories and tell their own, where we share hands-on knowledge, challenges and ideas gained from our day-to-day work and have lots of informal time to have conversations, create lasting relationships with our peers and - not to forget - eat good food and have a dance.
We made sure all the provision for the event from transport and food to the venue, was run and serviced by local community or social businesses, thus trialling a live example of community partnerships and social supply chain in action.
We collaborated with the team behind Ethos magazine with the aspiration to create a 'learning document' that is full of resources; a captivating read and looks so good you want to keep it on your mantelpiece for people to find (and take).
But most importantly we wanted to create the opportunity for the participants to have some time to reflect and gain a fresh perspective on their place and their work, feel nurtured by the knowledge that they are part of a wider network and go home with renewed energy for delivering change in their community.
We know from the feedback received that our event was very much appreciated, and we want to thank all attendees for the incredible genero sity with which they approached each other and the format. We learned so much from you all.
A big thank you to Power to Change for putting its trust in us and for all the support along the way. Of course we would love to do this kind of thing ourselves again, iron out some kinks and try out some new things.
But actually, what we want the most is for learning to be delivered more often on a grassroots level and for more organisations like ours to take the opportunity to create the kind of event that they would like to go to. So, see you next time in Sheffield or Luton or Rostanga. We are looking forward to it.
Text taken from People Power, the learning document produced in partnership with Ethos Magazine. See more at www.ethos-magazine.com
