Thought Leadership

December 2021 We hosted a special Christmas interview with two social enterprises selling presents with purpose as part of our festive campaign to encourage shoppers to use their spending power and buy social. We spoke to Dave Linton founder and CEO of Madlug – a Northern Ireland based social enterprise selling award winning bags. For every bag sold, a pack away bag is given to a child in care. We also spoke to Kerrine Bryan – founder of Butterfly Books, a social enterprise which creates playful and thought-provoking children’s books which challenge stereotypes and perceptions around jobs and gender. Watch the recording below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmjww0yILkY

October 2021 We were delighted to host an interview with Adil Mohammed Javed, CEO at Alchemy Arts – a brilliant social enterprise set up to support underrepresented people work in the arts. They are a business set up to break down barriers, dedicated to reclaiming the narrative, telling forgotten stories, and using the creative industries to raise up voices and empower communities. Adil discussed their their projects which range from challenging the negative stereotypes of mental health in racialised communities to reducing social isolation in the elderly South Asian community and supporting them to becoming more tech-savvy in their flagship project TEK Eagles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4SkipRZvNc

October 2021 What can social enterprises from Turkey, Lebanon and the UK learn from each other? We believe social enterprise is a global movement and we joined social enterprise experts and friends from Turkey and Lebanon to learn more about the rise of social enterprises supporting disadvantaged communities, how they creating opportunities for women and refugees and addressing inequality from the Eastern Mediterranean to the UK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3OImNZllVY

October 2021 Cafédirect, one of the UK’s most successful and recognised social enterprises, turned 30 in 2021. To mark this milestone we hosted an online interview with their CEO, John Steel, to find out more about the incredible impact the business has had over the last three decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y37IfhRYUXI

July 2021 We interviewed Chief Executive of Social adVentures, Scott Darraugh to find out more about their story, their incredible work over the pandemic (including transforming a café into a social supermarket tackling food poverty) and what the future has in store for social enterprises working in health and social care. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYhBRTokRmc

June 2021 We were joined by social enterprise experts and friends from Colombia and Jamaica to learn about the role of social enterprise in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals, how they are making a difference to disadvantaged communities and addressing inequality in South America, the Caribbean and the UK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcDCTbQmviE

March 2021 We were joined by social enterprise leaders from Thailand and Singapore to learn about the rise of social enterprise, the middle class and the economies of South East Asia, the potential Asian Century, the idea of Singapore-on-Thames, inequality, and social enterprise as a global movement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SrQ6bHRumI View Da's slides on the state of social enterprise in Thailand here. View Casper's slides on Singapore's social enterprise sector here.

February 2021 We were delighted to be joined by Gareth Hart from the Plymouth Social Enterprise Network and Jodie Marshall from the Sheffield Social Enterprise Network for a public discussion on how social enterprises are driving change at a local level. Both Plymouth and Sheffield are accredited Social Enterprise Places, recognised as hotspots of social enterprise activity. Watch the recording below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOAacXQecxs