Monday, 10. October 2022
Our partners from SIX brought together key stakeholders of the social innovation ecosystem offering valuable insights
The study visit in London covered a range of topics and organisations, from the perspectives of universities and community supporters to social finance infrastructure builders and social innovation thought leaders. This study visit was designed in a way that it would cover both top down and bottom up change making initiatives.
On the first day, we met various social innovation organisations and ecosystem builders – from quadruple helix model of community innovation in King’s Cross, a meeting with Nesta to learn more about their strategy and mission-driven innovation to a Q&A conversation with Geoff Mulgan. The second day featured Big Society Capital and their work in social investment, followed by Power to Change, who shared the context of the UK’s localism agenda and social innovation.
MAKE @ Story Garden is a public studio for creative collaboration with, and by, the local communities from Somers Town and St Pancras in Camden. The aim is to bring local people together with students and staff from Central Saint Martins around a programme of arts and creative activities, skills development and projects that address local and global issues.
We started off with a little tour of the garden, then sat down and had an informal conversation with Nicola Gilcreest, Central Saint Martins’ local engagement manager. She shared about the range of partnerships and community engagement work that the university is involved in, including Design Against Crime, the journey of MAKE @ Story Garden and their work around sustainability. This conversation brought unique insights into how the processes of participatory arts and creativity could be transferable and complementary with social innovation work.
Nesta (formerly NESTA, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) is an independent charity that works to increase the innovation capacity of the UK.
In the afternoon, we visited Nesta's Strategy Unit and heard about their new strategy focused on tackling key issues in the UK - Fairer Start, Healthy Living and Sustainable Future. Nesta and our partner Danish Design Centre exchanged challenges about organisational shift towards mission-based strategy and how that can entail organisational cultural shift and difficult conversations.
Big Society Capital is the leading financial institution dedicated to social impact investment in the UK.
Tuesday morning kicked off with an engaging session on social financing. Amir Rizwan, Investor Relations Director shared with us Big Society Capital’s decade long journey from their beginning till now. We heard the insider story of their evolution and learning over the last decade to lobby for financial resources in dormant bank accounts to be used for social causes and how the organisation has pivoted since. Read their PDF publication "Ten Years of Investing for Impact" here. This session turned out to be extremely useful for our German partners, who are having exciting conversations around mobilising dormant bank account funds.
Geoff Mulgan has vast experience building social innovation systems and institutions around the world. He has held roles such as the CEO of Nesta, Director of the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, CEO of the Young Foundation among others. He is currently Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London (UCL).
We moved from South London back North to meet Geoff Mulgan at University College London. Our ESIA colleagues shared what they are currently curious about and we had an interactive session talking about futures, imagination, innovation and building support infrastructures for social innovation.
Power to Change is a charitable trust operating in England, created in 2015 with a £150 million endowment from the Big Lottery Fund. The trust is solely concerned with supporting community businesses in England over a ten-year period, after which it will cease operating.
In the afternoon, we met with Stephen Miller, Director of Impact and Learning and Susie Finlayson, Strategy and Programs team lead at Power to Change. We heard about Power to Change’s work supporting community wealth building* and how they pivoted to put more money into supporting local communities during covid-19.
*Community wealth building is a new people-centred approach to local economic development, which redirects wealth back into the local economy, and places control and benefits into the hands of local people.
Our study visit ended with an inspiring panel discussion sharing stories and experience in creating a long-term social innovation legacy in cities. This event was built on SIX's work with Seoul City over the last decade. The panel brought insights from education to European policies, the arts to urban planning and gave a wide ranging look at contexts from Hong Kong to Mexico City.
This study visit offered a holistic ecosystem understanding, from the top down and the bottom up. While several partners have heard of concepts like community wealth building or the work that Big Society Capital has been doing activating dormant funds, the conversations during this visit gave our partners an in depth look at the challenges and learning of their work. These are invaluable insights that they could bring back to their countries and learn from.
After the visit, our partners were put in touch with the organisations should they wish to continue further discussions. Meelis Joost from the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs was very inspired by this study visit and plans to organise a session with different ministry departments to share the learnings from London. We hope that the social innovation processes from London could be well adopted and useful for other partner countries!
The study visit took place in London from September 26 to 28, 2022.
The European Social Innovation Alliance is a joint project of Centre for Social Investment, Danish Design Centre, Danish Social Innovation Academy, Diakonie Schleswig-Holstein, FASE GmbH, Foundation for Civil Society, Glasgow Caledonian University, Institute for Work and Technology, Phineo gAG, Social Entrepreneurship Netzwerk Deutschland e.V., Shipyard Foundation, Social Enterprise Estonia, Social Innovation Exchange, Tallinn University, Technical University Dortmund, Võru County Development Agency with the lead partner Social Impact gGmbH and is funded by the European Commission via the European Social Fund and the European Programme for Employment and Social Innovation.
