Overview

On Friday the 23rd of July, London Creative Labs held the second of its Social Startup Labs in Brixton, South London, in association with Remade In Brixton . In one day, 15 participants (a mix of local entrepreneurs interested in making and selling products, and some non-local entrepreneurs) learned by doing how communities can work together to create and grow social businesses that provide or enable employment opportunities for all (including the disadvantaged) and make their neighbourhoods better places to live, work and play!

At the end of the day, several social ventures emerged

The Event in three sentences

• The morning was about building the bigger picture of needs, assets and "offers" (buyable or exchangeable assets) of a bunch of people in a room
• The afternoon was about taking action that was informed by the bigger picture from the morning.
• The power of community was used to encourage and provide lift-off for individual initiatives, working them from idea to social startup, social project or to bring fresh teams around existing social project or startups.

The next Social Startup Labs will be scheduled soon! Watch out for info and tickets here.

Output: Full Output from the lab

A new social startup, social projects, fresh help for existing social startups were the outcomes:

• Existing Social Startup: Pie Finance obtained a new collaboration partner
• Existing Social Startup: Brixton Skillshare received a plethora of new marketing ideas for marketing the workshops
• 2 Freelancers emerged with stronger, viable business models (Emily, Laura)
• A new social project emerged from the Action Cycle Session: 15 minute inspirations event on August 12th
• Existing Social Startups: Brixton Skillshare, London Creative Labs and Makerhood outlined a potential project synergising their offerings into a joined up service focused on makers.

All of the ventures moved forward.

Participants created a qualitative picture of needs, assets and what individuals in the room had to offer. A database of those items now exists -- the source for a participatory map!

A heightened sense of trust, practical help and community"

Event Photos by Sofia Bustamante.

The Video Collage [see further above]

Raw data: needs, opportunities and assets. Click here to see it

Evaluation

The Verdict

Again, the overall process worked. The morning was an improvement on the last lab's morning session, in terms of energy and focus. Still can be improved though - less focus on opportunities meant that the full potential was not reached. The afternoon went well, though did not quite reach the fever of the last lab. We will tighten the facilitation for the afternoon, probably adopting the same structure for the afternoon as the first lab, since the act of highlighting opportunities is, we think, key to moving a group from a bunch of individuals, to a collective.

What worked well -- morning

People felt less drained than they had in the last lab's morning session. It was great to use a creative process to elicit people's individuals offerings, needs and assets. A safe space was created for people to be supported in, in practical ways.

What worked well -- afternoon

The Open Space format worked. Sessions were high in energy. The Action Cycle produced a concrete outcome. Business models were crystalized in the Business Model Prototyping session. Most people stayed for the whole day and new people joined stayed with us till the end. Social ventures formed and left people inspired.

Things that could be improved

• The Speed Dating worked for some and not for others. Very noisy. We only got around half the group.
• On the whole people got quite a bit out of the 1-1 process, at the expense of time that could have been used on the collective process
• The opportunities were not so explicitly uncovered. They were left to implicit processes.
• Conversation was used (speed-dating) before producing collective maps of any kind. Probably out of balance compared to the time that was spent on the collective mapping and pattern-sensing.
• It is certainly easier to cluster less data. Really helps when a team of people helps to cluster the data. We managed to do this over lunch time. Really, it would be better to do it so that there is time for the collective to view emerging patterns. This sets up the group up in the afternoon for real collective opportunity-based initiatives, rather than sticking to the default individualist approaches

Unedited Feedback from Participants who were there at the end of the day

What did you get out of the the event?

• A community of interesting people,
• support for projects and ideas
• commitment to get new things happening
• Inspiration, sharing, contacts, business models
• Sense of Community, skill share potential
• Inspiration, motivation in looking at my goals
• New ways to tackle people needs in moving on with their businesses
• Learning more about London Creative Labs
• Writing down the next little steps
• conversations with like-minded others
• Open forums with less structure provide more valuable discussions between attendees
• Seeing the Action Cycle work in practice
• Ideas and collaborative opportunities
• Met interesting people
• Good to hear all the different approaches people have to trying to achieve their goals
• Meeting lots of interesting people and hearing about their projects, work
• Giving more form to a potential joined-up support service for local makers/start-ups
• An action cycle

What should we do differently?

• Have no suggestion at the moment as I found it just quite perfect
• A record of what you're taking away?
• Let's talk
• Making more pictures, visuals
• Would be better for intros to also include Person A talking to Person B and then Paerson A introducting Person B to the rest of the group
• LCL funding/pitching
• Remade In Brixton: August 12th event
• Decorate the room with inspirational words and phrases
• Pie
• Felt like speed-dating and mapping activity overlapped and maybe only mapping is needed? That would give longer to clustering and finding patterns and that would be great
• Would have liked to include the World Cafe section at the end of the morning. Speed dating was good but the group session afterwards felt a bit confusing -- maybe having pre-set questions to discuss would have felt more coherent?
• More action!

How would you like to stay involved?

• Offering my skills and knowledge for projects that need it
• Offering my skills and knowledge for projects that need it
• creative development
• identity development
• visual facilitation
• illustration
• ideas
• Not sure yet but we are already having an inspirational event Thursday August 12th evening
• Deliver NLP workshops
• Teach people Origami?
• contribute to content and workshops
• Provide a space where the makers they meet and work with can sell things, talk to other makers etc. Especially to help them encourage people to try out starting a business
• Work together to set up an infrastructure/flexible network to provide ongoign support to the makers and projects involved in the Reuse Centre and Skills Share.
• I am involved