by David McGlashan

It’s been a busy week! On Monday I was at the Social Economy Alliance fringe event at the Labour conference, our students were in for the last block of this year’s Start Up course this week and yesterday I was at the launch of the ICSF’s ‘Realising the Potential of Social Replication’ report.  Details below, along with a couple of other things I’ve spotted this week.

Social Economy Alliance at the Labour fringe

On Monday I went to the Social Economy Alliance fringe event at the Labour conference.  It was a well attended event, and it was great to see SSE Fellow Tokunbo Ajasa-Oluwu on a panel that also included Hazel Blears MP, Jon Trickett MP, Belu Water’s Karen Lynch and Young Foundation’s Simon Willis.

Encouraging was the panel’s unwavering belief that the social sector’s time was very much now and the politicians in the room certainly said the right things about the importance of the social economy. The run up to 2015 has started!

Realising the Potential of Social Replication

Last night the ICSF launched its new research examining replication among social organisations and also celebrated its first birthday (helped by several fridges full of free beer!).

If you are thinking about replication, the report is well worth a read.  (You may also want to consider the social franchising course that we run in partnership with ICSF…)

Bristol and Plymouth become first social enterprise cities

The South West was confirmed as a social enterprise hotspot as Bristol and Plymouth were both named ‘social enterprise cities’.  Both cities are also two of SSE’s newer delivery locations.

Social Enterprise Question Time next Thurs

A reminder that the second Social Enterprise Question Time takes place Thursday – there are still about 20 tickets left, but they are going quickly.

We’ll be live tweeting the event using #socentqt.  If anyone knows an easy way that we could stream the event, let me know ([email protected]) – we have a laptop and a video camera!

New Finance for Social Enterprises and Charities

This was actually last week but it slipped through – Social Investment Business have launched ‘Local Impact Funds’, held by local sector bodies and aiming to plug at least some of the funding gap.

This post is by David McGlashan, SSE’s Enterprise Officer. You can follow him on Twitter @davemcglashan