Makespace Business Breakfast: Autumn Series

At Makespace Oxford we have a friendly and collaborative community of freelancers, social enterprises, small businesses and not-for-profit organisations. We’ve started monthly sessions to share experiences, challenges and learn from each other about how to make our organisations grow and work more effectively!

At our Business Breakfasts we meet bright and early over coffee and pastries around a specific topic or to hear from a host from our community.

We’d like to extend the invitation to our Business Breakfasts to other businesses and enterprises in Oxford who have a social impact.

Please find the full Autumn series detailed below.

 


5th September: Polish your elevator pitch

When someone asks you about your work do you struggle with an answer? This session will be participatory and will help you create a short pitch and practice communicating your purpose with confidence. With Emma Gordon and Alice Hemming of Makespace Oxford

More about the hosts:

Emma and Alice are the Coordinator and Co-Director of Makespace respectively. They both have experience of working in and alongside social enterprises and community businesses, especially around start-up support and development, notably Bicester Green, Orinoco and The Children’s Allotment.

Join the event by clicking here.

 


3rd October: Creating healthy working cultures

Hot desker, Paula Haddock, will be hosting a session on well-being and resilience. If you are trying to make your start-up grow or are working in social change, the chances are you might experience stress and overwork. This session will give us the space to explore how we can avoid burn out and create healthy working cultures.

More about the host:

Paula is a qualified mindfulness teacher and is interested in on how mindfulness can support social change work. She co-founded the Mindfulness and Social Change Network and has trialled new courses on Mindfulness for Social Change with Ecodharma in Spain as well as covering a role in the training team at Freedom from Torture. She is passionate about capacity building and transformative training, with an extensive background in managing training in the international development and civic society sectors.

Join the event by clicking here.

 


7th November: Raising social Investment

Tom Carman of Ethex, a crowd-investment platform based in Oxford which enables enterprises to raise finance from a network of 15,000 positive investors, will be hosting a session on social investment. This session will cover an introduction to what social investment is and how to approach raising investment in your social enterprise or business, including more information about investment‑readiness grants from The Reach Fund.

More about the host:

Tom is a Business Development professional with expertise developing projects, programmes and new business for social enterprises, charities and co operatives, particularly those working in food and farming, land based enterprise, environmental improvements and community business.

Tom has previously worked at Sustain, Real Farming Trust, Plunkett Foundation and Groundwork Hertfordshire and is a long-standing trustee of Oxford City Farm and on the Chair of Cultivate Oxford – a 400 member strong vegetable distribution co-operative. Connect with Tom here: https://www.ethex.org.uk/tom-carman_2018.html

Join the event by clicking here. 

 


5th December: Crowd-source your compliance

The CAG Project will be hosting a session to share learning on creating policies and procedures to suit the scale and purpose of small social enterprises and businesses e.g. maternity, sick leave, GDPR etc. Bring your favourite policies!

More about the host:

The Community Action Group Project is a small team of people with expertise in supporting community groups, social enterprises and cooperatives to start-up and grow. The network they support has grown since 2001 to over 70 member groups, all with a purpose to create solutions to environmental and social issues affecting Oxfordshire. Connect with them here: https://cagoxfordshire.org.uk/

Join the event by clicking here. 

 

All Makespace Business Breakfasts take place 8.30-9.30am at Makespace Oxford (in our downstairs events space), 1 Aristotle Lane, OX2 6TP 

If you have any questions please contact: hemmingalice@hotmail.com