Community Action Suffolk’s “Communicate Collaborate Celebrate” conference on 4 March 2016 is an exciting opportunity to build new skills and knowledge that could transform your organisation this year. We will discover how to make our organisations sustainable, prove their impact, value and resilience.
CAS is bringing together locally and nationally recognised speakers and workshop leads to explore how the voluntary and community sector and statutory sector communicate, collaborate and celebrate.
We thought you might like to “meet” some of our speakers and hear what they have to say ahead of the conference!
Simon Glenister: Do commissioners dream of electric sheep?
Andrea Pittock: What funders want; really, really want… from a successful application
Richard Selwyn: Thinking differently!
Matt Woor: Slaying Trolls and dispelling myths
Sarah Stamp: A surgery with Councillor Sarah Stamp
Ann Osborn & Fran Bedding: Inspiring Social Impact
Will Thomas: Creative Collaboration for Solving Big Challenges
Hannah Reid: Consorting with the Enemy – Competition or Collaboration?
Click here for the full programme of the conference.
“Do commissioners dream of electric sheep?”
Using simple IT solutions, such as blogging, to capture the impacts of your work can make the difference between getting commissioned or not. Noise Solution has been using blogging as part of its toolkit since 2009 in its work with people on the margins. This short demonstration highlights their award-winning practice in this area.
Simon Glenister founded Noise Solution in 2009 to use music technology to create social impact. The social enterprise arose as a fusion of Simon’s own experiences working as a professional musician and also working with excluded young people. Simon identified that for the young people he was working with music could be used, particularly music technology, to very rapidly create something tangible, positive and credible. This experience helps to build self-confidence – a fundamental building block for improving lives.
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What funders want; really, really want… from a successful application
An opportunity to hear about funding updates and what has been achieved in Suffolk and an insight into what funders look for.
Andrea Pittock, Grants Manager at Suffolk Community Foundation, and says: “It is great to have the opportunity to meet lots of organisations that may be interested in making grant applications but keen to miss some of the pitfalls. I hope to be able to assist you in strengthening your applications.”
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Thinking differently!
How thinking differently can maximise opportunities for working together and realising the value of our services.
Richard Selwyn is Assistant Director for Children’s Commissioning in Suffolk County Council. Richard has worked for 15 years as a public sector commissioner, consultant and policy lead in local and central government and a range of sectors. He is a regular lecturer at the national Commissioning Academy, and author of Outcomes & Efficiency.
In 2005 Richard redesigned the national model for children’s commissioning which was also adopted by major government departments. However, Richard’s career started in the Ministry of Defence in 1996 in international naval procurement and space engineering. He then progressed through the Department of Health and Department for Education and Skills as a policy lead for Children’s Trusts. He was a consultant in PwC, PIPC and Cognizant where he headed the Government practice and was a Director of the Commissioning Support Programme. Richard continues to contribute to national thinking through lecturing, newspaper and journal articles, new service models and his book Outcomes & Efficiency: Leadership Handbook available through Amazon.
Slaying Trolls and dispelling myths
Social media creates its own myths and barriers in people’s minds about reasons why they and their organisations can’t engage with it – in this workshop we will discuss problems you may have and hopefully show, with real life examples, how even small changes can dispel those myths and break those barriers.
Matt Woor is the Social Media Channel Manager for Suffolk County Council. Working within the Communications and Customer Services team since 2009, he is a passionate advocate for the customer. He is heavily involved in the council’s digital transformation project which is looking to digitalise services within the council to improve customer experience but also to help achieve financial savings.
Matt says: “My workshop is an opportunity to explore how social media could be used to benefit your organisation. I hope to be able to share some of my experience and demonstrate how social media can be a powerful tool in reaching and engaging with your audience. I will also outline a simple 4 step plan on how to pull together a quick social media campaign and I am really looking forward to fielding any questions you might have about making social media work for you or your organisation.”
A surgery with Councillor Sarah Stamp
An opportunity to discuss concerns and opportunities, anything you want to raise, in this surgery with Cllr Sarah Stamp who is the County Council’s cabinet lead for the VCS.
Sarah Stamp is the Suffolk County Council Cabinet Member for Communities, which includes responsibility for relationships with the Charitable and Voluntary Sector.
Sarah is also a member of St Edmundsbury Borough Council. She is a trustee of both the Southgate Community Partnership and Focus12 and as such, understands the challenges faced by the sector. She is also involved with several Suffolk based organisations, including the King Edward VI Foundation, Suffolk Museums, One Haverhill, Newmarket Vision, Dance East, The New Wolsey Theatre and the Suffolk Libraries Industrial and Provident Society Limited.
Sarah is married to Justin and has three children. Professionally, she is self-employed working with businesses, individuals and charities to raise their profiles, improve their communications and develop their business. Sarah is passionate about working within a community to empower it, make it stronger and safer.
Sarah says: “During my workshop session I’m keen to meet representatives from Suffolk based organisations and share ideas on how we can work together to tackle the challenges we all face.”
Inspiring Social Impact
Facilitated by Fran Bedding, The Rural Coffee Caravan Project and Realise Futures will be sharing their experiences of identifying social value. Attendees will hopefully leave the conference inspired and with the confidence to approach things in a different way. We want to inspire organisations to start thinking about how they deliver outcomes and how they can demonstrate the value of these effectively – through working with commercial and public sector. Often in ways that they have not tried before.
Ann Osborn started working for the Coffee Caravan over 12 years ago when it made about 15 visits a year. “We now do over 250 visits and many other events such as our very popular Golden Age Fairs. Keeping it funded hasn’t been plain sailing but we have learned how to really analyse our outcomes, document every last ounce of the value we add and develop good relationships with our funders. I’m looking forward to sharing what we do and hope that we can inspire people to realise the full value of the services they offer.”
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Fran Bedding has worked in funding for 20 years both in the Local Authority sector and outside. “Before that I worked in economic development and planning. My main interests are rural issues and project development where those projects have tangible and visible outcomes that benefit communities and/or businesses. I have headed up Suffolk County Council’s External Funding Team for the last 7 years and we have successfully supported bids for European and UK funding to support a range of projects that include Brightspace social enterprise centre in Ipswich, Low Carbon Champions – a business support project to help small businesses to adopt more resource efficient approaches, New Cut Arts in Halesworth, NALEP’s Growth Hub and many small but important community projects such as village hall developments.”
Creative Collaboration for Solving Big Challenges
Our ambitions to create strong, empowered communities present us with big challenges – problems that are messy, hard to define and complex to solve. This workshop will guide you through a process for helping to unpick new ways to work together and find new approaches for tackling these wicked issues. You’ll be encouraged to dream; to think practically; and even to embrace the temptation to point out problems as we work together to develop solutions for these challenges.
Dr Will Thomas has worked on a number of projects focussing on the provision and management of health and social care services involving public, private and VCS partners. His research interests currently centre on responding to the economic and demographic challenges currently facing providers and commissioners of care services and on how lessons can be taken from this domain to other management areas. Will is also an experienced trainer working on leadership and employment skills courses in professional and academic settings. He is currently Deputy Head of the Suffolk Business School at University Campus Suffolk.
Will says: “I’m delighted to have the chance to work with attendees at this CAS conference and to develop ways for us to collaborate in order to tackle difficult and complex challenges. I’m looking forward to initiating and renewing partnerships that will benefits individuals, communities, provider organisations and those with responsibility for commission and managing services.”
Consorting with the Enemy – Competition or Collaboration?
This workshop will give you a ‘how to’ approach to working in partnership and forming consortia. Taking you through best practise processes and key responsibilities of partners; you will leave feeling ready to analyse your organisation’s reasons for collaboration and with a clear approach to getting started.
Hannah Reid is the Senior Development Officer for Economy & Enterprise at Community Action Suffolk. Having worked in Public, Private and Voluntary sectors for the past 14 years, she now specialises in business and organisational support for Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprises including Business Planning, Social Impact Measurement, Forming Consortia and Partnership Working.
Hannah says: “I’m running a workshop centred around effective partnership working and I’m looking forward to discussing the good, the bad and the sometimes (but hopefully not often!) ugly of working with others!
“Effective partnership working is about honesty, trust and openness; but also relying on partners to do what they say they will do in an appropriate and defined timescale. It’s all about boundaries and making sure each and every partner knows what is expected of them. Partnerships can be tricky things, they key to effectiveness is working through problems and trying new ways of working, after all as Einstein said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them!”
