Social Saturday 2015 continues to inspire people to BUY Social!

By Sana Amos

Social Saturday marked another huge success on 10 October, with well over 50 events nationwide showcasing the contribution of over 70,000 social enterprises to the UK.

The momentum of the awareness day campaign received widespread coverage across local and national press, as well as on social media. With high profile twitter support including the Prime Minister and Jamie Oliver it was no surprise that #SocialSaturday2015 was trending across social media platforms.

Today is #SocialSaturday2015, the day to celebrate social enterprises. Use your spending power and #buysocial today! pic.twitter.com/M6w7L7Rrik

— UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) October 10, 2015

Today @SocialEnt_UK & @cabinetofficeuk celebrate #SocialSaturday2015 small changes make a big difference #buysocial http://t.co/KopBb6TuBy

— Jamie Oliver (@jamieoliver) October 10, 2015

Enterprises across the UK got in the spirit of Social Saturday by running events to showcase and promote their services to the public and highlight how every day they make a positive social and environmental impact.

One good example that truly demonstrated how social organisations can bring the community together was Divine Chocolate, the award winning chocolatier and social enterprise. They celebrated the day in style by hosting a free fair, that brought London’s social businesses in fashion, food and drinks sector together at the Lexi Cinema, itself a social enterprise.

Speaking of the significance of the day Peter Holbrook CBE and CEO of Social Enterprise UK, said: “Social enterprises are redefining how business gets done. When you buy from them, society profits. Social Saturday is all about celebrating and raising awareness about our growing movement. This year we want to really put social enterprise on the map through a range of events across the country.”

At Poached Creative we are proud to be working with Social Enterprise UK to produce the branding and campaign materials for the Buy Social campaign, that helps to support and promote social enterprises like ourselves across the UK.

Social Saturday 2015 is coming on 10 October

Social Saturday is a nationwide day dedicated to promoting social enterprise.

Following the enormous success of the inaugural Social Saturday 2014, Social Enterprise UK, and more than 70,000 social enterprises across the country are preparing for this year’s event. 

Their activities will raise awareness of the significance of the social enterprise sector to individuals, communities and the economy as a whole.

A social enterprise is a business model that works to achieve a social mission. Profits are usually reinvested in social causes and sustaining the business.

When you buy from a social enterprise, you buy social. Buying social means you provide an unemployed person with a career opportunity, or provide a homeless person with a bed for the night, or help the environment, as well as saving money and challenging profit-driven only businesses through competition.

Social enterprises have been working hard to elevate communities since the nineteenth century when workers in Rochdale formed a co-operative in response to the exploitative working conditions. However, social enterprise as we know it today re-emerged in the mid-nineties.

When a new social enterprise emerges, entire communities reap the benefits. Varying in size, purpose and industry, they range from small social enterprises like Poached Creative to nationwide enterprises like the Big Issue. 

Being a social enterprise ourselves, specializing in writing and design we completely understand the importance of buying social. We are also pleased that in recent years social enterprises have become an integral part of everyday life in London. 

Over the years we have had many partnerships with social enterprises across the country, including Social Enterprise UK – who we proudly created the original Social Saturday marketing materials for. We buy social whenever we can. 

To mark the occasion, in the lead up to Social Saturday we will shed a light on different and unique social enterprise in our local area of Hackney. 

The Hackney Pirates

Part of the Hackney Pirates Ship of Adventures
Courtesy of The Big Issue Online Journalists

The Hackney Pirates is an enterprising charity working to develop the literacy, confidence and perseverance of young people in Hackney, so that they achieve both in school and in the world beyond.

The educational social enterprise was thought of by Catriona Maclay, who at the time was a teacher at a primary school based in north London. Through her experience as a primary school teacher she realised that a change in the learning environment could benefit pupils aged 9-12 and make them more receptive to learning.

The Hackney Pirates began as a pilot scheme supported by Bootstrap, now it is well established. They work together with local schools, volunteers and families providing local kids with the dream class room: a Ship of Adventures complete with secret passageways, an underwater cave and a ship’s cat. 

During the voyage participating pupils receive support in order to enhance their writing and reading. They are also encouraged to take part in a unique creative publishing project in which young people work with professionals to write their own books, CDs and websites, allowing them to practise their writing skills as well as see the whole project through to publication.

Catriona Maclay, Founder of The Hackney Pirates says:

"We believe that young people learn best when there's a little adventure involved, and when they can see that their work has consequences in the real world, so our publishing projects are a great way for young people to develop their literacy while also building up their confidence and perseverance.

 If you would like to spend your Social Saturday supporting The Hackney Pirates, then pop by our Ship of Adventures - a unique gift-shop, book-shop and cafe where you can see all the fantastic work of the Young Pirates on display."

Read our Social Saturday blog #2 on Circle Sports.

Hackney residents seek a new era for affordable rent

By John Watts

Residents of the New Era Estate in Hoxton held a family-led demonstration with their supporters on 1 December, calling on Westbrook Partners to keep rents affordable, following their recent purchase of the property. Families living on the estate say that are at risk of being made homeless by the proposed treble rent increases.

The protest began outside the Westbrook Partners offices in Berkley Square, Mayfair where they held a rally, before walking to Downing Street to hand in a 300,000 signature petition.

The New Era Estate in Hoxton has a history of affordable housing and is home to 93 families, many of whom have lives there for generations. Linsey Garett, chairwoman of the New Era residents association and a young mother who works for the NHS, said: “My parents live on this estate too. There are families like mine who have this area in their blood.”

The treatment of the New Era Estate residents by Westbrook Partners has again raised the issue of gentrification in the capital. Jules Pipe, the Mayor of Hackney recently said that the treatment of the New Era Estate tenants is unfair and that the proposed rent increases are ‘tearing the heart out of Hoxton’.

Their story has come to represent the plight of low-income Londoners in the face of huge rent hikes, cuts to housing benefit and the insatiable appetite of foreign investors for London properties, pushing house prices well out of reach for local families.

The steep rise in house prices in London has seen rapid social and economic change over the last decade. Property prices this year alone have risen by 20%, whilst wages have drastically failed to keep pace. The National Housing Federation has warned that you’ll now need to earn more than £100,000 a year to afford a typical 80% mortgage in London.

Long-standing communities are being torn apart in what many people at the protest said was an outrage. An elderly lady attending the protest, who didn’t wish to be named, said that she had two daughters and their families living on the estate who were not able to come because they were working on zero hours contracts in low paid jobs and couldn’t afford to take the time off, so she had come in their place.

Russell Brand, who has been campaigning passionately on behalf of the residents and seemed to have been the focus of the massive media presence rather than the petition or the New Era Estate residents, again reiterated his support and the ‘awful way’ Westbrook was treating them.

The issue is no longer just something affecting the low paid. Key workers and those on an average income are also being forced out of their local areas.

When the petition was being handed in a chant went up of, “HOMES FOR PLEBS! HOMES FOR PLEBS!” which brought smiles to the Downing Street Protection squad. Even the police know that key workers like themselves need affordable housing if they are to continue to live and work in London.

As a Hackney-based business and social enterprise that works with long-term unemployed and marginalised people, Poached Creative and our writers are closely following the New Era Housing saga. Read former trainee Sam Hooper's recent guest post on In My Shoes and look out for our forthcoming feature in the next issue of The Pavement.

Big Society - should we sign up?

As a social entrepreneur I feel like I really ought to support the Big Society. The idea of people, not government, deciding what they need and how it should be delivered appeals to me a lot. Practical, flexible, responsive, innovative solutions come out of unexpected places and in many ways, this is what Poached is all about.

Yet there are two big problems I just keep running up against when it comes to this Big Society idea of David Cameron's.

1. It's a political idea that's attached to a political ideology that I'm not sure I want to be aligned with. Social enterprise isn't the place for party politics and I'm sure a lot of people in the third sector are finding this political association a bit uncomfortable. So, I can't see it succeeding unless we can find a way to depoliticise 'Big Society' and convince communities that they really do have the power. But for this to happen, the money has to follow the initiatives. Which brings me to the next big problem.

2. Where's the money? The public sector doesn't have it - in fact public sector cuts are already having an affect on social enterprise support. The private sector doesn't have it - and in the UK a high proportion of private sector companies rely on public sector business so the recovery isn't looking so great after all. The Government doesn't seem to have it (or certainly doesn't want to give it away) and the third sector sure doesn't have it. It seems that the banks do have some of it - in disused bank accounts - and this is going to be pulled together into a Big Society Bank, due to open in April 2011, with somewhere between £60 million and £100 million. But loan funding alone won't be enough. And volunteers won't be able to run public services for nothing.

The Government is right in thinking that the people who use services and the staff who provide them know how best to redesign those services. Many of them already have - and we have a thriving social enterprise and charity sector to prove it.

But what I've learnt since setting up a social enterprise is this. Disadvantaged people do need support to find their own solutions, projects do need funding, and people do need to get paid for their hard work.

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Thanks to UnLtd and the Big Society Network for getting the thinking started with their event last Wednesday. Find out more about the event.