A new term.

Spent tonight organising resources for those running the tuck shop. We met and discussed matters today and so tonight, using Google drive I have placed relevant documents for part D (Running an Enterprise) in their folders so they can get the details written up. Their enthusiasm remains fantastic and they are keen to get started again but they are a bit more reluctant to write up the details. I know this because they told me!

They are doing everything right, keeping a tally of expenditure and income, trying to balance the books each week and just you try and take something without paying!

On a serious note they are trying to balance SEQ against a busy programme of school study, music lessons, rehearsals and everything else.

A great effort by all concerned.

Delivering SEQ at Aston Villa Football Club by Debbi Rawson, Aston Villa FC Social Enterprise Academy Coordinator

The past 10 months have been a fantastic journey, working with 7 different groups from 2 different schools on the Aston Villa Social Enterprise Academy. I met the young people back in October 2013, when they started to learn about businesses and the idea of a Social Enterprise. As young people do, they had many opinions about social and environmental issues that affect us every day, and were quite passionate about the issues they felt they would like to support. From there we looked at how we could develop a Social Enterprise to help these causes.

The start of our SEQ journey involved a fair amount of learning and evidencing, I didn’t want the students to see this as just another lesson in their school day so I needed something to inspire them.  It was then that I took them out of the classroom and got them to see a real-life, successful Social Enterprise.  We went on a visit to Frost and Snow bakery, a small café in Birmingham City Centre, which had started out as a small business selling cupcakes. Frost & Snow now have their own premises, adjacent to a homeless shelter which is ran by Midland Heart, and they train people that have been taken off the streets to work in their bakery and café. Seeing this gave the young people the inspiration they needed, they could clearly see how a small Social Enterprise business could help and support and how it could expand. It is definitely something I would advise to other mentors, I only wish I had more time to go and see different Social Enterprises as I think it would have been a great opportunity for the students!

Getting back to the classroom, I saw a spark in the students to get started on their planning for their businesses and the ideas started to flow. Staff from our marketing department came down to the schools to speak to them about marketing their businesses, which again set the students off which a range of ideas.  The trading activities took place during May and June 2014, we had a range of business ideas, with smoothies, baked goods, fitness DVD, crushed ice drinks, world cup themed goods and clothing & jewellery, the students made their businesses successful and some are also looking to develop them further in the future.

Working within the football club was a fantastic advantage for the academy, we had a film crew, restaurant, marketing department and so much more on offer to use to support the students.  One key piece of advice I would give is to work closely with partners, I was lucky to be working in such a big business, but if you don’t then link up with a business that you could use to support, it really does make such a difference and helps give the students something real they can relate to. Involving other people within the SEQ to speak to the students and taking the students on visits was also very beneficial.  All of these things will help you (as mentor) and students along to delivering a successful, fun and engaging project!

Debbi Rawson – Aston Villa FC Social Enterprise Academy Coordinator

Didn't realise it had been so long since my last post. Portland Rocks CIC has been very busy with various projects so the fact that the young people running our tuck shop are managing it so well is great. It is quite entertaining every week watching them try and balance the weekly account making sure the opening balance plus what they sell on the night adds up to the money they have in their pot. Strange thing is they nearly always seem to end up with more money than they should. The weekly tally sheet is usually covered with their calculations in a variety of colours! The tuck shop is entirely self funding a testament to the efforts of the group that run it. They need to decide what to do with the small surplus they have made.

Over the summer I would like them to work on other aspects of the course so need to prepare suitable resources to give them. I have tackled SEQ in a different way with this group in that we set up the enterprise first and will  then move on to other parts of the course. With this group I think this has been the right approach, all keen musicians, most are 15-16 but the financial manager is 13.Plan is to have their work moderated in the autumn.

The Portland Rocks tuck shop is now well and truly established and making a tidy little profit for the young people involved. They believe most people and staff who attend each week buy something and it helps to create a more sociable atmosphere at our workshops. Tonight we spent some time sorting out the weekly finances so they can track their profit and loss each week. They also need to consider what they want to do with the profit.

Saw some good ideas from the social enterprise art strand tonight. Some really simple broaches made from recycled materials that could be made simply by the young people and sold.

Update. 8th May 2014

For a whole host of reasons things have gone quiet recently, mainly to do with the machinations of Mr Gove and his view of arts subjects in the curriculum but we are still battling away. The young people are now firmly in charge of the tuck shop and it is a weekly feature of our workshops. Our volunteer book keeper and myself have been trying to get the financial processes in place using Google docs as all our young people have chrome books given to them by IPACA the local academy they attend and where I teach.

We have helped them set up an on-line spreadsheet where they can monitor their expenditure and profit, and profit though small there certainly is. They were given a £20 float to start and gave it back to us a long time ago.

They are very keen but essentially come to Portland Rocks to make music and socialise so pinning them down on financial management has been a challenge but we are getting there. The group of five who started this enterprise is now basically down to three although others do help with serving.

Social Enterprise driven by young people.

Thought I had to post tonight as I've just come from a really productive Portland Rocks Session. We are launching our social enterprise art strand at the moment and James Kimber ( art leader), Laura (trainee) and myself sat around with young people discussing their ideas:

Tonight they were trying out ideas  in tapestry using off cuts of material and we discussed our first event. They will be producing pieces of art work out of recycled items and putting on a sale combined with live music and refreshments provided by the tuck shops crew who are also artistic and musical

I went through all the paper work for their tuck shop and how to evidence it for gold SEQ. They have really taken ownership, are starting to understand what sells, how to manage stock and beginning to get a grip on the ethical consideration as of what they are doing. They have made a small profit already. We discussed the SWOT analysis and they discussed the limited audience to whom they sell, just people attending the weekly workshops though some did help with refreshments at our concert with the mini Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra on Saturday.

We have set a provisional date of mid July for a combined art and music event where we will also provide refreshments. This gives us us time to generate art to sell, decide on which refreshments to provide , decide the venue, rehearse the live music. We will also be offering any local artists the chance to take tables for a small fee at our event to promote their work and raise money to support our CIC.

We currently have artist Podi Lawrence coming to our workshops to sketch the musicians as they work a great experience for our young people.

Week beginning 17th February

Just realised there has been a massive gap in my postings. We've been very busy over the last few weeks delivering a project with the mini BSO (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra) and Dorset Music Services. On Monday 10th February the mini BSO performed in three different schools on Portland and each session was followed by a 'have a go' session on woodwind instruments led by music service tutors. Over 600 students saw the performance and around 90 students had the chance to try playing an instrument.

On Saturday 22nd February the mini BSO are giving a another concert for the community in a local community centre, a late morning event. Although not SEQ focussed our young people have helped with promoting the event via social media, re tweeting, distributing posters etc. They will be helping with refreshments and running a raffle.

This is the third fund raiser since November so now we will discuss with the young people what they would like to spend some of the money on, we always try and reward their efforts by purchasing some much needed equipment. Much of what we have is begged, borrowed or donated.

The tuck shop is now a permanent fixture at our weekly workshops and we officially launch our social enterprise art strand on 24th February.

Week beginning 27th January

Not too much paper work type stuff going on this week as we have a fund raiser on Saturday so our young people are busy rehearsing. We take over a fantastic pub called 'The George' one of the oldest buildings on Portland for a Saturday afternoon, an annual event and one that usually packs out the pub (It's not that big) and is a really nice afternoon raising a few hundred much needed pounds to sustain our work.

We have agreed to meet on February 10th to discuss writing up  paper work relating to the tuck shop as many of the details are currently on scraps of paper work.

Social enterprise art project starts next week, with official launch on Monday 24th February. First project is to make mobile phone 'socks' using recycled material. I've no doubt our art leader and trainee have come up with a great idea and perhaps I can post some photos soon.

Book Keeping!

The enthusiasm of our young people is amazing and they are very protective of their tuck shop. The Portland Rocks steering group that runs the CIC took the decision to give them a budget of £20 to buy their first batch of stock and they are now brilliant at coming into the venue and getting set up. If you watched the video in the previous post you will see how quickly one of them moved when she thought someone might be helping themselves even if it was only a joke!

They do keep written notes of what they sell but it is a bit chaotic at the moment so we are now working to rationalise it all. The young people are all students at the Aldridge Academy on Portland and so have a chrome book which they can take home as well. Therefore we helped them set up a cash book in Google docs.which can be shared with myself and our volunteer book keeper so everything can be monitored. If you've never tried Google docs I do recommend it. Like most people I used Microsoft Office for most things but the Docs feature is a very powerful tool for collaborative working and quite intuitive.

We have recruited a parent volunteer who has offered to buy stock for the young people so long as they give him a list of what they need and the money to buy it from a local wholesaler. However, on Monday they told me they still have some stock to sell so looks like they will be arm twisting our attendees to buy things whether they want them or not!

Social enterprise art strand starts on 3rd February with official launch after the February half term so we have started publicising via Twitter and social media.

Week beginning 14th January 2014

Portland Rocks started again this week so time to get the tuck shop up and running again. Stock is a bit depleted but we have recruited a volunteer who has kindly offered to collect stock from a local wholesalers once the young people have identified what is selling well. Most conversations seem to revolve around Maoams at the moment! I plan to meet with the SEQ students next week so we can start to write up the paper work. The trouble with working with motivated musicians is getting them in one place. Four of the group have been helping our dance dept. at IPACA with their production of Fame Junior providing some live music in a show performed to backing tracks.

So what does a Portland Rocks session look like, well before Christmas I gave our young people a couple of cameras and told them to video a workshop session how they see it which I have since edited into a short film. This was a sharing session where the various groups play to each other.  Young people run their own rehearsals and pretty much all the material you here including the jazz numbers are originals. Lighting in the venue isn't great so it is a bit grainy but this is very much Portland Rocks in the raw!!!!

If you are wondering who I am, I'm the keyboard player in the jazz group, my main instruments are actually clarinet and piano. This group usually have a saxophonist but she was absent that night. They managed to film me looking suitably grumpy!

Well here goes, my own blog to write about my SEQ experiences working with a variety of learners on Portland and the surrounding area.

My first moderation experience was with a very mixed ability year 10 group at what was then Royal Manor Arts College on Portland now IPACA (Island of Portland Aldridge Academy); a group of around 10 students worked on the bronze course. What was exiting was seeing them plan an enterprise trying to raise funding for a cause they had decided on and cared about personally. I believe the enterprise element was important in motivating them and through the experience of delivering to them I now prefer to introduce the enterprise first so as to get young people hooked on something practical that they can take ownership of.

For enterprise purposes they decided to split into two groups and were tasked with setting up an enterprise on a budget of £20:

Group one created a set of five post cards of our local area and sold them to raise money for cancer research. They did everything including recruiting a fellow student not on the course to take the photos. The photos were then printed and sold making a profit of around £23 in a relatively short apace of time.

Group two spent some time trying out various ideas to raise money to donate to diabetes research including approaching the national society. In the end they exploited an opportunity that came their way because of the diamond jubilee. The school was hosting an afternoon of ‘wacky races’ and because it had been arranged at relatively short notice they needed someone to provide refreshments. The idea of selling jelly and ice cream to raise money for diabetes might seem strange but they certainly spotted a need as they made a profit of over £25 in around an hour selling their product at 25p for a plastic cup full. In the end they were just selling jelly as they ran out of ice cream.

They researched Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant and the Eden project among others as part of their work being two well known social enterprises relatively local to us. Whilst researching their favourite products I have to say I learnt loads about well known items and their production including mobile phones and music players, some of it was truly eye opening!

They were an interesting group to work with as I think it would be true to say they were a little bit wary of this ‘unknown’ course but they enjoyed organising their enterprise, learnt loads about taking responsibility for their  work, basic business organisation and in the end lessons were pleasant and quite social.