This year social enterprise support charity Unltd, together with a group of national organisations from the CtrlShift movement, are delivering a series of themed workshops to connect local social entrepreneurs and voluntary sector representatives across North Staffordshire.

The ‘Exchanges for Change’ programme is conversation-based; connecting organisations linked to CtrlShift with local people and organisations with similar passions, to create a network built on sharing information, skills, resources, and ideas.

These events aim to bring together those who have a special interest in the following areas:

• Mental wellbeing and caring: how can we develop peer-led processes of care and wellbeing?
• Making & selling: how can we build on the area’s making heritage and existing making activities to provide opportunities for skills development, training, and employment?
• Democracy: how do we organise and make decisions locally?
• Value: how can we redefine what we mean by value and shift the goals of our local economy?
• Planning and Regeneration: how can we strengthen the potential role for arts, culture and local agency in planning and regeneration (this exchange will take place away from the timetable below).

These ‘exchanges’ are all about getting interested people together so won’t necessarily have a fixed agenda. Working over three sessions, initial conversations will be around what the CtrlShift partners are doing, introductions, and finding out what’s happening in the local area. Then moving on to the next steps; sharing ideas on how to work together in the future to develop the questions which have been raised for each theme.

Session one: Wednesday 3rd March from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Introductions, meeting others and sharing what you’re doing locally.

Session two: Wednesday 17th March from 10:00 am – 3:00 pm
The ‘Exchanges for change’ – this is where the magic happens. Exchanges will take place, with each theme being covered more than once. They’ll take place several times throughout the session so that you can join several themes if you’re interested in more than one area. There will also be a chance to network with others attending the session.

Session three: Wednesday 31st March from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Deciding on next steps. You’ll be able to share your ideas on how the new network can work collaboratively for a better North Staffordshire.

 

To join these Exchanges for Change sessions, or to find out more, please contact [email protected]