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Reflecting on the 2022 Social Enterprise Policy & Practice Conference: Our Key Takeaways

With the 2022 Social Enterprise Policy & Practice Conference now behind us, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the things we’d learned on the day from our speakers and from the group discussions that took place between our delegates.

In this blog our CEO Martin Avila discusses his key takeaways from the day, reflecting on the great work many organisations have done to champion diversity and inclusion, whilst highlighting some of the issues that others face.

Coming Together in a Social Enterprise Venue

At this year’s conference it was very difficult not to come out of the room thinking how fantastic it was to see everybody again. There was a real buzz around the venue for the entire day, which really peaked during our group discussions, where we focused on topics such as how to build an inclusive economy, the work organisations need to do on making their working practices more inclusive, and how we overcome barriers to inclusion both organisationally and socially.

It was just as heartening to see everyone engaged in thoughtful discussion as it was to see the smiles on people’s faces as they caught up with people they hadn’t seen since before the pandemic.

For me personally it was great to go back to the Kinning Park Complex (KPC) and to try out something that we’ve been wanting to try for a long time, which is to hold a national social enterprise event in a social enterprise venue. I’d like to offer a big thanks to KPC for hosting us and to our Marketing and Events Team of Jo Seagrave and Mark Fraser for pulling together such a great event.

It was great to host the event in a social enterprise venue, as we see more of these venues develop and get back to hosting larger in-person events they are only going to become more of an option for organisations.

The Growth of Social Enterprise Venues

We are now starting to see venues in Glasgow like the KPC, the Pyramid, the Hidden Gardens join other established venues such as the Grassmarket Community Project in Edinburgh and many others across the country, pop up. Increasingly we are seeing more community venues and facilities open across the country that operate as social enterprises.

It became apparent to me in the discussions at the conference that there is a lot to for social enterprises to celebrate, and many opportunities available for them. There are of course still challenges, particularly around the cost-of-living crisis and the aftereffects of the pandemic on many people’s physical and mental health, but the social enterprise community is in a great place and although the challenges seem bigger, in some ways the opportunities have never seemed bigger too.

Building and Growing an Inclusive Economy with the Right Support

Many social enterprises have an appetite for growth, but that’s not the whole story. During the conference we could see that there’s real desire to grow social enterprises of scale such as those that were discussed by Duncan Thorp from Social Enterprise Scotland in his presentation. However, we can also see that many social enterprises exist to address market failure, where they are taking over challenges that are too complex or difficult for the private sector in the market, or even for the state to fix.

What was apparent was that social enterprises are up for the challenge of helping to build a more inclusive economy through community wealth building, but it’s clear that resources and support will be needed to do that.

Not only do we need to think about where we’re spending our money and how organisations procure goods and services  (which is a community wealth building pillar and something we’ve covered before), we also need to overhaul the onerous processes that support social enterprises to take over well performing assets.

In her presentation, Ailsa Clark from InspirAlba spoke passionately about how there’s no other alternative other than to try and bring some of the most productive assets of the economy into social, cooperative and local forms of ownership.

Indeed, we can’t build a truly inclusive economy through community wealth building if we privatise all the most economically productive assets, whilst at the same time expecting social enterprises to deal with some of the most wicked and complex social and environmental problems.

Making Our Working Practices and Workplaces More Inclusive

A real highlight for me was Andy Brogan from Easier Inc’s presentation on progressive work places – workplaces, which are progressive, that put their teams in charge of setting the standards and the goals that they’re working towards – and there are many great examples of more inclusive workplaces in the social enterprise sector already.

Both Helen Denny from Not9to5 and Gael Drummond from Firstport demonstrated how their own social enterprises are on a journey towards a more inclusive workplace and provided examples of many social enterprises that are also on that journey. It is something that we also embrace at CEIS, so it was great to hear that there has been a concerted effort by many organisations to embrace this cultural change.

Because simply put, we cannot take care of everybody else in society if we don’t take care of our own staff. If the pandemic has shown us anything it’s that the most productive and impactful organisations are those which put their staff front and centre and embark on setting organisational goals collectively.

Breaking Down Barriers to Inclusivity

One of the most inspiring sessions for all the delegates in the room, based on the feedback, was the session that was led by  and included others such as  t s Beall, one of co-founders of the new social enterprise Protests and Suffragettes, as well as Lindsay Wake from Social Investment Scotland, and Naomi Waite from Inclusion Scotland. In this session, the speakers discussed how organisations can overcome barriers to inclusion and demonstrated how social enterprises have and continue to make progress in building inclusive and diverse workplaces.

These organisations are at the forefront of creating a new narrative. Be that through Employerability, a term coined by Inclusion Scotland, or through challenging an Anglocentric history with Protests and Suffragettes.

Social enterprises have been and remain at the vanguard of overcoming barriers, and participants were really glad to be able to listen to some of the support that is available from CEMVO, Social Investment Scotland and Inclusion Scotland and learn about their respective programmes such as:

  • CEMVO’s
    • Social Enterprise Business Development Support for ethnic minority organisations
    • the Race / Equality Mainstreaming Support Programme
    • the Scottish Minority Ethnic Women’s Network
  • Inclusion Scotland’s Employerability approach
  • The Diversity Forum Manifesto and working towards inclusive social investment.

The feedback from this session seemed to be the most eye opening for many of our delegates, with many indicating that they felt there was a lot to take away not only in how they should approach breaking down barriers to inclusion in their workplaces, but that they felt confident they could now do this with the support of the organisations that took part in the panel discussion.

Social enterprises continue to be the forefront of building not only inclusive and diverse workplaces but trying to build a more inclusive Scotland too. It’s clear that we’re going to need this diversity and this togetherness because aside from the opportunities and challenges for social enterprises, the biggest takeaway that I have from the conference is that we need to collaborate to take advantage of these opportunities and address these challenges.

Social enterprises just need to be given the support that goes along with these increased responsibilities to help create a better place to live and work for all the citizens of Scotland. With that support, social enterprises can achieve all that we believe they can.

Martin and the CEIS Team

 

If you missed our conference you can now watch the entire session, and see the speaker ’s presentations, over on our website.

We’re all looking forward to doing it all again next year. Hopefully you’ll join us!