POP ideas impact

“Having POP & POP ideas around to support sharing and collaboration with special events & valuable advice is of huge benefit to Plymouth.”

POP ideas Impact: October 2014 – March 2023

”We firmly believe we are stronger together. The kind of services POP & POP ideas offers really helps charities to collaborate and remain a cohesive and positive force within the city, to ensure we can all help those who need it most in the best possible way.”

Quotes

“Fantastic training, thank you so much.”
Writing a Funding Application workshop delegate

“A very productive, positive and extremely rewarding session.  Many thanks.”
Writing a Funding Application workshop delegate

“Wonderful warm presentation and atmosphere.”
Presenting with Confidence workshop delegate

“Really useful and I took away a lot of good information and ideas to research.”
The Difference We Make workshop delegate

“Excellent supporting tools in understanding legal structures, thank you.”
Legal Structure workshop​ delegate

Our Reach (up to March 2019)

See below our ward map highlighting the areas we have worked in.  Below that you can download the individual wards information to find out more!

Ward Maps & Information

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Street-to-Scale (round 1)

Thank you to everyone who has shown an interest in the Street-to-Scale fund; to those willing to try something new and to those who have collaborated to bring about change in their communities. You have helped to trial a radical way of enabling funding to reach citizens.

POP+, working with Ratio, a CIC based in London, set up Street-to-Scale to test a method of funding based on trust, believing that local people know best about how to tackle local issues.  

Street-to-Scale funding opened in 2019 and within weeks, POP+ had received more than fifty expressions of interest. Twenty five projects were completed with a further seven, youth-led, projects made possible with funding via Ratio CIC from the Tudor Trust. 

Learning Champions Kim & Charlotte would like to thank the projects involved for their time and conversation which has helped POP+ to start to understand how this funding can reach and support grassroots community action. 

After feedback, a new welcome ‘envelope’ (replacing the box) has been designed, with six postcards offering step-by-step instructions. Street-to-Scale is designed to work with minimal contact and involvement by organisations, there are only a few rules and it operates on trust and relationships between group members.   

Street-to-Scale Update May 2020

More details of how to get involved will be posted on the Facebook pages of community groups across Plymouth. There will be a pot of funding set aside each month to stimulate action among small groups of people who may never have thought of applying for funding. 

What is Street-to-Scale?

Street-to-Scale funding is for up to £1000 to help people bring about postive change in their communities, for their communities.    

The money must be spent within eight weeks; anything not spent will be recycled into other S2S projects.

There is no application form;  there are no targets and no need for written outcomes.   

Who is it for?

People keen to support change in their community:  

Anyone can form a Street To Scale group, and connect with those in their community who share an interest in the same community mission.  

Informal groups of people: it is not necessary to be a constituted group.  

You may gather and work together for just the eight weeks of the project with no obligation to continue beyond this.   

However, should you wish to continue beyond the eight weeks, support is on offer through the POP ideas Ideas into Action workshop

Why Street-to-Scale?

We know that people have ideas about their communities; we know that people are ready to put them into action and that they may just need a little bit of money to get things started.   

POP+ wants to enable funding to get into the heart of our communities. POP+ believes that people can be trusted to make the right decisions with, and for, the communities in which they live.   

Street-to-Scale has been set up to pioneer ways of funding within (and for) communities and to test and learn from these new methods. 

Getting Started

Please keep an eye out for our Facebook posts. We’re posting in Facebook groups across Plymouth. This is so we reach out to people that POP+ would not normally be in contact with and perhaps would not normally consider being active in their community.

Here’s a taste of the fantastic community action made possible by Street-to-Scale across Plymouth so far:

  • Rock the Block – A silent disco event for community residents to come together in Stoke
  • Adelaide Angels – Litter picking, gardening group and events in Adelaide Street to increase community engagement. Click here for Plymouth Herald article
  • Arabic School – A school led by volunteers teaching Arabic to Arabic and non-Arabic speakers improving social cohesion 
  • Collective Good – Creating personal welcome hygiene packs for homeless people in hostels  
  • Free Radical Creations – Art, photography and social opportunities using different spaces  
  • Madness with WonderZoo (Mental Health Arts Day) – A Mental Health awareness event for artists to share work and perform  
  • North Star Study Group – Looking at the impacts of colonialism through a Monuments Walk, a book club, film screenings and raising awareness of the group  
  • No Whey Plymouth – Vegan food and marketplace celebration in Stonehouse 
  • PAP Project (Blue Plaque Project) – 40 blue plaques designed to celebrate the positive history of Plymouth   
  • ReadEasy Plymouth – Training coaches to work 1-1 with adults to improve literacy  
  • Royal Cinema Trust – Saving the Reel Cinema through raising awareness 
  • St. Matthias Community Garden – To buy tools to improve the gardening group at St Matthias church  
  • Banking for Change – Creating art spaces for children and adults in Stonehouse and building a grotto for Santa when he came to Stonehouse last Christmas   
  • Fish is Fun – Teaching children about fish, their habitats and sustainability   
  • Street Meets – North Stonehouse – Bringing residents of North Stonehouse together through ‘street meets’, events, food and gatherings   
  • Medicine through Time (Medifest)– developing the idea of Science & Health Exploratory through display areas and an event in Plymouth Guildhall
  • Greenbank – Onward House – Housing Estate Summer Activities 
  • Spaceforce – Workshops to build and then launch Space Balloons into near space   
  • THINQTANQ – Improving the environment of a community workspace in PL1  
  • Another World Farm – establishing a demonstrator indoor urban farm 

Young people’s Street-to-Scale Projects 

  • PZL Small Press (YEA Plymouth) – workshops with young people, setting up a small zine printing press and producing zines  
  • Infinity Festival (Ernesettle Community Day) – Youth Music festival in Ernesettle
  • Youth Community Garden – creating a green space and pizza oven at Redeemer Church 
  • Traversing Wall – Scouts and Leaders, planning, designing and building a climbing wall on the Scout Hut in Keyham 1st Keyham (St.Mark) Scout Group 
  • New4You (Youth Communal Area and Fire Pit) – Firepit and extension of communal area for Youth Group  
  • Big Wills Memorial Garden – Southway Youth Centre 
  • Diversity Project – Whitleigh Youth Group exploring different cultures and religions 
  • In other Words (Routeways) – Celebration Ball arranged by and for young people experiencing mental health challenges 
  • Growing Together – making and selling goods at a community market and a pop-up Christmas Shop along with a business run by young men with additional needs.  
  • OK Boomer – Literary Arts event planned and delivered by young people at Leadworks Factory – Rendle Street, Stonehouse

Coming Soon

  • Stiltskin Creative Arts & Theatre Company – Community Event run by the youth people’s board at Soapbox Theatre Devonport Park 
  • Bee Project – Exploring ideas to tackle the decline of bees. Set up by students from Plymouth High School for Girls 

Links

https://q.health.org.uk/event/street-to-scale-learning-from-trust-based-funding-for-citizen-action-matt-bell-michael-little-zoom/ 

https://www.instagram.com/streettoscale/ 

https://www.facebook.com/streettoscale/ 

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Positive People

Inspiring you to build a brighter future

Everyone should have the chance to succeed in life, to develop skills and build a career. Positive People is a flexible community programme designed to help you take positive steps towards building your confidence, gaining new skills, and eventually move into work or training.

Help with everyday life:

  • Personal development – help to build your confidence, health and well-being.
  • Help to master digital technology – including computers, tablets, phones, software and the internet.
  • Signpost you to benefits, advice and financial advice

Improve your qualifications and help you to find work:

  • Help to access training – anything from basic skills to vocational and professional qualifications.
  • Help to prepare for work – including clubs and work trials so you can try out jobs and gain experience.
  • Job search – preparing CVs, applications and interview practice. We will also help you to approach employers.
  • Access to computers, internet, printers and photocopiers.
  • Advice on apprenticeships and self-employment.

Positive People (part of the Building Better Opportunities programme) is a project jointly funded by the Big Lottery Fund and the European Social Fund and is funded up until September 2022.

If you would like to join the programme or have any specific questions about the project, please contact Chris Maccullie on the office phone number 01752 395131, mobile 07951 313163 or email: chris.m@plymouthoctopus.org.

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Belong in Plymouth

Belong in Plymouth is a network of organisations and individuals who wish to see Plymouth become a city where no one feels forgotten.

We want people to take the time to notice one another and to see everyone as having something to give. We want to ensure that each individual feels connected – whether that is through families, friends or communities – and, that in doing so, they belong.

Isolation, loneliness can affect us all. We know that feeling lonely and cut-off from other people can have a significant impact on both our physical and mental health. There is amazing work happening through the actions of neighbours and organisations across Plymouth but we know that by working together we achieve so much more.

Click here to visit the Belong in Plymouth website.

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SIMPL

The Social Investment Market Place Learning (SIMPL) v1.0 collaborative programme was designed to develop understanding of the barriers to developing the social investment market and raise awareness of the opportunities, risks and potential benefits of social investment.

As the first year progressed it became clear that whilst social investment should remain important, if we were truly focussed on social impact, for social investment to be maximised, we had to work out how it could sit alongside other forms of finance, collaboratively.

Exeter Co-Lab, Torbay Community Development Trust, POP, Essence, PSEN and Local Spark Torbay form this strong collaborative around a common purpose of growing a robust social economy across Devon (and beyond).

Our view is that tackling complex issues via a traditional grant funded/social investment approach through individual organisations is not enough. We need to take a wider view of the whole social-economic-political system that causes these issues – a system that currently fails to tackle them effectively.

To begin to tackle these issues, we believe that we need a philosophy that is:

  • Human – showing more empathy, creativity, passion and trust
  • Learning – using data to learn, accountable, striving to improve
  • Systemic – thinking about the whole rather than the symptoms.

We believe that by creating the conditions for effective social investment more wisely using a Human, Learning, Systems philosophy we can begin to tackle the wicked issues more effectively.

Growing the social economy – the crucial role of networks

From relationships to collaborations to creating the conditions for innovation and positive change.We believe that for a social economy to flourish and shine even brighter, we need more collaboration and collective action – i.e. more network development and support.

We’re a group of six organisations: Exeter Co-Lab, Torbay Community Development Trust, POP+, Essence, Plymouth Social Enterprise Network and Local Spark Torbay. We formed our strong collaborative around a common purpose of growing a robust social economy across Devon (and beyond). Originally focussed on creating a healthy market for social investment, we quickly learned that the formal and informal networks that connect social economic actors creates the conditions for connection, collaboration, and innovations to emerge, and ultimately this creates the conditions for social investment. This is a system-based approach to catalysing the development of a resilient and robust social economy.

We have witnessed for many years, and particularly during the last six months, that collaboration is vital. Yet it does not emerge naturally; charities, social enterprises, grassroots organisations and other fellow travellers are time poor and operate on very tight margins. They often find it difficult to connect to others, to organise across boundaries of geography or interest and to campaign on wider issues. These and other actors often find themselves in silos, disconnected from information, new perspectives and, sometimes, unable to fully understand the common issues we collectively face. When networks and network weavers – the roles that each of us on our collaborative play – offer light touch, easy to engage, diverse, fluid and information-rich relationship, silo walls break down, learning becomes easy, new perspective become clear, and new possibilities are illuminated.

This is where formal network organisations and network weavers can play an important role in creating the ground conditions for the social economy to know itself, connect and collaborate, grow and become more resilient. Some of our shared activities include:

  • Networking: We connect individuals and organisations with similar social and ecological ambitions to one another, sometimes providing the key introductions that lead to new possibilities. As network conveners, we have greater visibility and network intelligence, allowing us to reach and create bridges between unconnected spaces, places, and people. This is fundamental for any convening, advocacy and brokering.
  • Convening and co-design: We support people to engage, to bring the context, to feel like equal partners and foster deep listening and observation to inform and shape solutions across sectors. Local businesses, academia, local government, citizens and more all need to be involved in the weaving of regenerative local economics. This convening capacity enables new connections, increased peer-to-peer learning, new collaborations, and innovations.
  • Advocacy and representation: We represent our members by having a direct relationship with those that don’t have the resource to make themselves heard by themselves. This way we are able to convey opportunities and needs of a diverse group of organisations and people to other parts of society that don’t have direct links into our communities.
  • Providing and/or supporting enterprise development: Networks – our formal and informal relationships – mobilise the knowhow for the business support and investment needed for social enterprise success, which drives sustainable development of the social economy. Networks are often a first point of contact for entrepreneurs and changemakers – those starting community projects, socially enterprising organisations, etc.
  • Information and learning: Networks create the conditions for learning, capacity building, linking information, experts, institutions, toolkits – and crucially, unlocking the peer learning and support developed by network members themselves. Networks also play an important role in distributing news, updates and other information such as government support measures in times of crises. This significantly helps smaller organisations to keep up to date with relevant developments.

These activities are not always covered by one organisation but rather an ecosystem of network support. For example, one network support agency might focus on social enterprise, another on grassroots community organisations whilst yet another might focus on social entrepreneurship within Black, Asian and other Minority Ethnic communities.

We need to value networks.

The time has come to understand and value the vital role that networks and network weavers play in creating the conditions for innovation and development of the social economy. We – as a society – need:

  • A new ‘social economy contract’ among the major financial and policy enablers of the social economy – the foundations, funding bodies and government policymakers.
  • A new understanding of how economic change happens ‘on the ground’ and the change dynamics that move through the medium of networks. Networks enable flow, connection, innovation, and change.
  • To recognise that the resultant value doesn’t just sit with those being connected: value is created for the statutory sector, for funders and social investors, communities and society.
  • Statutory sector partners, funders and social investors to work with us to create a future where a fairer, more sustainable economy is supported through a rich ecosystem of infrastructure and support.
  • A conversation with partners and stakeholders about how we create a healthy balance between long-term support, impact and accountability for networks.

Where network development and support is strong, the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector is strong. Where this works well the social economy flourishes.

Impact & learning

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