Collaborators
● Plymouth Social Enterprise Network (PSEN)
● Plymouth Hope
● Nudge Community Builders
Briefly describe your project
Raising public awareness of Social Enterprise in Plymouth through focus groups and developing exhibition material.
A small exhibition with focus groups will be the start of a six month conversation, as part of the 10th Anniversary of Plymouth becoming the UK’s first Social Enterprise City.
PSEN will be working with Plymouth Hope and Nudge to explore how we can raise public awareness of the positive impact of social enterprise in Plymouth. We will aim to engage a wider range of communities, developing visual material and ways of communicating that appeal to different events and locations, and accommodate the needs and interests of different groups.
Describe what you hope your Collective will achieve
Social enterprise organisations in the city employ around 9500 people and bring in an income of nearly £700 million. Yet the power of social enterprise is still largely unrecognised across parts of Plymouth. In the 10th Anniversary of Plymouth becoming the UK’s first Social Enterprise city, how do we tell those social enterprise stories to reach new audiences?
The collaborators will start by actively considering how to communicate the benefits of Social Enterprise to the public in Plymouth, using visual media including photography archives.
The collaborators will then together curate an initial exhibition representing social enterprise sectors and locations, which will create materials as part of the outreach programme for the rest of the 10th Anniversary year, including the annual Social Enterprise Festival in November.
Small groups will be invited to the initial exhibition venue for discussion facilitated by PSEN’s Network Co-ordinator and Activator, to inform how we can better reach new audiences.
Our exploration will be the start of a public awareness campaign, to consider the impact of social enterprise in Plymouth and to initiate vital conversations about the next ten years. PSEN will include data and comments from the public awareness campaign in this year’s evaluation and future strategy documents. The discussion will also inform PSEN’s research into the social enterprise sector as we head towards the annual Social Enterprise Festival in November 2023.
Describe how your Collective formed
PSEN initiated the collective, as part of their plans to celebrate and reflect upon the ten year anniversary. Nudge and Plymouth Hope are active members of PSEN. We’ve all worked together on festivals and shared events. The collective is a natural collaboration between organisations that share a vision of social enterprise in Plymouth.
Which collaboration “shape” do you expect will best describe your project?
HUB AND SPOKE – PSEN has the staff to co-ordinate the project and provide research material and source some of the images. The collaborators will meet to discuss resourcing of all the display materials and the nature of future events. They will all advise on the presentation of the stories and the inclusion of small groups for the discussion of social enterprise in Plymouth.
In which areas would you expect most of your grant to be spent?
The grant will pay for our collaborators’ time and expertise, some venue costs and display materials, including printing and video equipment.
