15 (more!) Innovations – Turning Problems Into Opportunities
Back by popular demand, we’ve taken another look into the archives and found 15 more examples of innovative approaches that turned problems into opportunities. In this follow up blog we take a look at 15 more innovative examples of projects that our 360 Associate, and Chair of Well North Enterprises, Lord Andrew Mawson has been involved in (If you missed the first 10, you can find them here).
1. Bow Arts
Bow Arts brought together local artists and members of the local community, including children and people involved in the community care project to host series of exhibitions in underused spaces and empty shops (a pioneering concept the time) leading to a large arts exhibition at the Barbican Centre. Germaine Greer who visited the Centre would later write a compelling article in the Financial Times comparing the Centres approach to Arts and Health with the new Sensation Exhibition in West London sponsored by Saatchi. Lord Mawson noticed that East London was the home to the largest artistic community outside New York but few in the public sector had recognised or understood in the early 1980’s the link between the Arts and Health. The local artist Frank Creber (the Lowry of East London) spent a large part of his life working with local people and capturing in over 200 canvases (both large and small), the changing landscape and lives of East London as it went through one of its biggest transformations in history.
2. Children’s Centre Program
The Bromley by Bow Centre pioneered the first working model of an integrated Children’s Centre in the country. In the early Blair years the government’s Children’s Centre Program was launched at the Bromley by Bow Centre by government ministers Charles Clarke and Margaret Hodge. It was seen as a blueprint for this Program.
3. Healthy Living Centre
Bromley by Bow was the Founder of the Healthy Living Centre movement. In 1999 the New Opportunities Fund (now the Lottery) invested £347m in a national program of Healthy Living Centres, the Bromley-by-Bow integrated health centre was the first working model. Social Prescribing had its roots in these early years of the Health Centres development with its focus on the social determinants of health. Now, 24 years later, the Bromley by Bow Centre is embarking on a major redevelopment of its three acre site and plans to create a new and and even more radical Community Health Hub. In doing so it can provide the blueprint for the next generation of integrated primary care and community facilities across the country.
4. Poplar Harca
Lord Mawson was a founding Director of Poplar Harca, one of the first Housing Companies controlled by local residents connecting housing, health, education and jobs and skills, with a focus on community building and place making. Today this company is responsible for 10,000 homes and has a £2.1bn regeneration program in Poplar where it owns 34 percent of the land.
5. The Great Banquet
In 1995 Andrew was asked by Cardinal Hume and London’s Church leaders to organise The Great Banquet, with fellow social entrepreneurs Adele Blakebrough and Helen Taylor Thompson. A central focus was to take the emerging partnership agenda into local communities across the capital city. This London wide event brought together over 30,000 people, with a central meal for 200 people at the Banqueting House in Whitehall. Attendees included Tony Blair, Sir Paul Condon, the Tory Peer Lord Peyton, Jesse Jackson from the US and a wide cross section of Londoners from all walks of life.
6. Community Action Network (CAN)
Community Action Network (CAN) was one of the legacy projects from The Great Banquet. In 1996 CAN created the first online support and engagement network for social entrepreneurs in the UK, and ran a wide range of innovative programmes. At the time the notion of social entrepreneurship was deeply controversial. In 2001 together with 4 other organisations we won £100m from the Millennium Commission and established UnLtd, with at that time also a controversial idea of giving grants to individuals (rather than organisations) as a way of improving their communities through entrepreneurial activity. This organisation is still going strong today. CAN also established the first monthly national publication for social enterprise and innovated and supported social franchising.
7. Stanton Guildhouse
Lord Mawson was asked by the then sub dean of Westminster Abbey, Doctor Anthony Harvey and the board of trustees to take responsibility for Stanton Guildhouse in 1996. This charity had its roots in Bromley-by-Bow and had a historical link with Mahatma Gandhi. This arts and crafts centre in the Cotswolds, established in 1960s by Mary Osborne (originally from Bromley-by-Bow) and built and run by volunteers was struggling after Mary’s death. Lord Mawson and his team turned the building into an exemplar project, a social enterprise which is no longer reliant on grant funding and is still going strong today.
8. Mind in Tower Hamlets
Lord Mawson was asked by Mind in Tower Hamlets to lead the redevelopment of its new building in Tower Hamlets – Open House. His involvement in mental health issues over many years and concerns about poor quality facilities led him and a small team of Mental Health ACT Managers to challenge and suggest alternative proposals for the redevelopment of the St Clements Hospital site. It has always been Lord Mawson’s contention that the building and development of communities where people are encouraged to come together around a shared endeavour will always be more cost effective than employing an army of mental health professionals.
9. CAN Mezzanine
In 1998 Lord Mawson and his colleagues Adele Blakebrough and Helen Taylor-Thompson established CAN Mezzanine, today providing high quality open plan office space and support services to hundreds of social enterprises and charities in 4 locations. Specifically designed to encourage and promote interaction and joint working.
10. “How to Mezzanine”
2001 DTI (now BiS) sponsored the publication of “How to Mezzanine”, a guide to setting up shared workspace.
11. One Church 100 Uses
In 2005 Lord Mawson and Donald Findley set up a new Social Enterprise – One Church 100 Uses to work with churches and christian denominations across the UK, to explore how the 55,000 church buildings could become local community hubs. They published 10 “how to guides” with English Heritage.
12. Water City
In 2005 Water City CIC was founded to promote East London as a positive destination. Innovative partnerships with Grand Design, Excel, the Tower of London and programmes of music and concerts involving young people performing in unusual surroundings such as the gardens of the Tower of London which now happens annually involving 100s of young people. The music programme is led by the amazing violinist Michael Bochmann.
13. St Paul’s Way Transformation Project
The St Paul’s Way Transformation Project was a “Neighbourhood level” (in today’s jargon) intervention that brought together the local authority, the local school, the GP Network and the local housing company (Poplar HARCA) to bring about transformational change in and around St Paul’s Way, a main street through Poplar. Together, we built a new £40 million secondary school, new primary school, new health centre, new mosque, new community centre and restaurant, new street scene and 595 new homes (and counting). In parallel with this we transformed the quality of the local leadership and thence of local service provision. The failing secondary school moved to OFSTED outstanding; the failing (semi-legal) GP practice was replaced and its successor became CQC outstanding; and the independently monitored residents’ satisfaction level is currently 85%.
14. Science Summer School with Professor Brian Cox
Following a chance meeting with the physicist Prof Brian Cox in 2011, Lord Mawson co-founded the Science Summer School Program in St Paul’s Way with Brian, in the middle of a failing housing estate at that time, in Tower Hamlets. Now in its eleventh year the Science Programme has now been replicated in Cumbria, Rotherham, Skelmersdale, Northern Ireland and the Brooklands Museum in Surrey.
15. Well North Enterprises and 360 Degree Society
In 2015, at the request of Duncan Selbie, CEO of Public Health England, Lord Mawson was asked to lead the £20M Well North Programme, taking the many years of practical experience in East London into some of the most challenging communities in the North of England. Out of this programme has grown Well North Enterprises and 360 Degree Society. Today, our innovation platforms are suggesting new approaches to health and social care and the delivery of public sector services.