Enterprise UK Blog

Aspirations, partnerships and sustainability continued to be a key theme at today’s EPN event, which focused on the role of social housing in supporting and promoting enterprise.

With a goal of creating a discussion around the important role of social housing in promoting, supporting and nurturing enterprise, today’s EPN event certainly didn’t disappoint.

An interesting mix of presentations and case studies combined with a group of delegates passionate about their role in supporting tenants and communities led to lively debate and thought provoking questions. Like any discussion it also highlighted a number of issues and challenges.

John Burroughs from Scarborough Borough Council started the proceedings by highlighting that, as major stakeholders in communities, social housing providers are ideally positioned to support and nurture enterprise.

Kevin Dodd, Chief Executive of Wakefield District Housing emphasised that housing is more than bricks and mortar, illustrating the connection between housing investment and improving the life chances of people.

Examples of best practice came from Wakefield District Housing’s mentor programme, which encourages colleagues to support and mentor young people in schools across the Wakefield District.

Connaught also showcased their Big Community Idea, which was launched during GEW 2009 – a competition that encourages great ideas from budding and existing entrepreneurs from within the communities that they work.

Create inspired the room with their own enterpise journey and shared their passion for creating chances and changing lives, they also commented on the fact that any business can ultimately be a social enterprise.

Zoe Marston from the Cottingley Cornerstone Centre, the setting for the EPN event, provided a tour of the facilities and demonstrated how the centre is meeting the needs of and providing entreprising opportunities for local people.

In fact you can see the presentations delivered by the guest speakers at: http://www.enterpriseuk.org/about_us/our_campaigns/the_enterprising_places_network

Overall the key points (of which there were many), which I’m sure will continue to be debated were:

- It’s not just about raising aspirations but about raising realistic aspirations.
- Projects and initiatives need to adopt a sustainable approach and offer support in long-term engagement.
- Partnership working presents a great deal of opportunity.
- Enterprise is often about taking risks.

We’re looking forward to how this subject develops and seeing how comments and ideas are taken forward to support enterprising campaigns further, to benefit individuals and communities as a whole.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Global Entrepreneurship Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.