I found out this week that I am very unlikely to ever win the Academy Award for Best Director. I’m probably not even going to be in the running for one of the more niche technical Oscars like Best Cinematography or Best Visual Effects. How did I find this out? Well, this week we held an event for SSE and yours truly was responsible for filming and streaming it online.
You can see the results here. I’m not sure that it will be appearing on Netflix anytime soon. Still, it was an excellent event and thank you to all those who came.
On with this week’s news…
Quick Change
If you are an SSE Fellow and you are reading this right now you need to do me a favour. We’ve sent a slightly different version of this newsletter to SSE Fellows with some slightly tailored news from the SSE network. If you are a Fellow, you need to update your profile and let us know so that you can receive the Fellows edition.
Gone in 60 Seconds
Today is the deadline to apply to our Third Sector Digital Leaders course. To apply, register your interest to attend in either Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool or London and I’ll send an application form over to you. It’s not a long form so you’ve got plenty of time to get it back to me by 5pm, when I’m leaving the office for a pint.
Hackers
Additionally, our school in Yorkshire and the North East are launching ‘Digital Socents’, a new initiative bringing together the tech start-up community and social entrepreneurs. They’ll be launching in Leeds on Monday 18th March with an ‘Art of Possible’ workshop, exploring how social enterprise and charities can think digitally and incorporate digital solutions that can really help scale and drive impact.
The event takes place at Cospace North Platform (right next to Leeds station) between 5.30pm and 8.30pm and it’s only a fiver to go along. You even get your dinner included with the ticket.
An Education
Officially the deadline to apply for Cambridge Judge Business School’s Social Venture Incubator was yesterday but we’ve done a deal on the sly and readers of Have I Got Social Enterprise News For You can have a little longer and get an application in over the weekend. On offer is six months of structured support, including monthly training days and regular meetings with an advisor. Your social enterprise can be at any stage of its development.
(The school also have a few remaining places on their Social Venture Weekend which takes place on March 1st. It’s aimed at emerging social entrepreneurs or those looking to refine their venture’s business plan).
Written in the Wind
A couple of new blogs from our friends over at Good Finance. First, our head of comms Sophie has drawn from some of our students and written a guest post on ‘How to Fall in Love with Leadership Again‘.
Next up, Emily Parrett of Good Finance has written ‘Impact Matters‘, looking at why it’s important to invest time and resource into measuring social impact. (Read it, think ‘gosh, that does sound important’ and then book yourself onto our Measuring Social Impact course.)
The English Patient
I think the Allen Lane Foundation speak for us all when they write that they are ‘particularly concerned about divisions in communities that occurred around the 2016 Referendum and subsequently’. And good on them they want to try to do something about it; they’ve launched a new Social Cohesion Programme. They’ll be supporting ‘community-led grassroots groups and organisations which have a focus of work being at a very local/community level’.
Splash
If you are in Leeds over the next couple of weeks and looking for something to do then check out ‘The Human Aquarium’, a brand new exhibition from SSE Fellow Lucy Meredith. It runs from 15th – 28th February at the St John’s Centre in Leeds City Centre and is designed to take you on the journey experienced by sea animals from their capture, to training, to performing in man-made tanks and pools.
Trading Places
A whole load of jobs this week if you’re looking to make a move:
Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship have two open positions. They are looking for an Associate Director for Programmes (£47,263 – £54,765) to be be jointly responsible for the overall direction and strategic development of the Centre. Deadline to apply is 20th Feb. They are also searching for a Systems Change Research Fellow ( £40,792 to £48,677) to ‘contribute to the development of a multi-disciplinary mixed methods approach for research on systems change in theory and in practice and will have primary responsibility for specific projects within the overall initiative’. Deadline to apply is 1st March.
In Rochdale, UP CIC have two vacancies: a Business and Development Manager (£27k) and a Training Co-ordinator (£22k). UP supports the work of WHAG, a charity providing domestic abuse support to women and men and homelessness support to women. You can find details of both vacancies here.
In Cambridge, Wintercomfort are looking for a Business Manager (£37,907) to manage and develop two of their social enterprises. Wintercomfort is the only day centre for the homeless in the city of Cambridge and their social enterprises create opportunities for training, volunteering, work experience and employment for service users. Applications close on 4th March.
Night at the Museum
A new £7 million partnership social investment loan fund is available to charities, social enterprises and community businesses seeking to acquire, reuse or redevelop buildings which are of historic or architectural importance. The Heritage Impact Fund will offer loans from £25,000 to £500,000 for up to three years to develop sustainable heritage at the very heart of vibrant local economies.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
This is brilliant. Burnham and Weston Energy, a CIC solar farm in Wick Farm, Somerset, have realised enough profit from their energy generation to establish the Burnham and Weston Energy Sunshine Fund. They’ll be offering grants of up to £2500 to community projects across the Somerset coastline. If you’re in the area and interested in applying the deadline is April 20th.
The Social Network
A week or so ago I got a notification that it was ten years since I signed up to Twitter. Back in 2009 it was certainly a more enjoyable platform, with far less of the anger, trolling and shouting at one another. So it was good last week to see Lightful’s Reclaim Social campaign last week, sharing thousands of more positive messages designed to reclaim social media for good.
Some of the highlights are available here
Shaun of the Dead
I couldn’t find a film title with ‘Haringey’ in the title but Shaun of the Dead was set there so that will have to do. Anyhow, we’re running another taster session for our Linklaters – Future Comunities Programme next Thursday (21st Feb) between 6pm and 8.30pm at Green Rooms, Wood Green.
The free programme will support passionate people in Haringey who believe that they can make a difference by setting up an organisation that can help their community for the better.
