On September 5th, in The Glade, an amazing outdoor venue behind Schumacher College, our community gathered to support five solutionary local business projects – The Living Projects, Montreal Style Bagels, CommonFlora, BrewHaHa, and Mend Assembly. Over 143 offers were made, including money and in-kind business services, worth over £11,500. And some investments were offers of introductions, knowledge, volunteering, Tweeting, applying plaster, bottling, deliveries, and even childcare. There was a lot of love and care in the woods that afternoon. What better way to build back?
‘Build Back Better’ has been a common cry over this strange year and a half in lockdown. Many people noted the positives coming from this experience, including the opportunity to set our economy on a better course toward meeting everyone’s needs, while cutting carbon emissions in half and protecting biodiversity. This kind of change only comes from everyone participating, doing what they can – not just talking about it, not just being a ‘switched on’ consumer, but actually investing one’s self in something juicy, something wonderful, something transformative. And this is just what happened at the 9th Local Entrepreneur Forum & Community of Dragons event in The Glade, earlier this autumn.
There was also a bit of a festival feeling. Food was served by The Kitchen Table and Montreal Style Bagels. On tap was kombucha from BrewHaHa, craft beer from Barnaby’s Brewhouse and cider from Dartington Cider. Izzi Bard, of Kuki and the Bard, played guitar.
There were three focused sessions for changemakers, too. The one on Local Responses to Climate Change outlined plans for a Climate Emergency Response Centre to be located in the centre of town, and for the updated Transition Streets programme. The session on Prosperity for Young People brought many together to hear about innovative projects like Crazy Beautiful World and New Futures Academy. And finally the Build Local Food Resilience session bright food producers and activists together to explore opportunities to build a regenerative food network, Devon Food Partnership.
If indeed we’re to bounce back after pandemic and Brexit, and really do what’s needed to do our part in South Devon to transform our local economy, build food security and resilience, take care of our young people and more, it will take more of this kind of thing. There will be more events like this, of course – maybe this spring! And there are plenty of other ways we can come together to collaborate, cooperate, connect for the common good. This builds ‘community’ and amplifies the positive feelings we already have living in this amazing place.
There – that’s the invitation. See you at the next Local Entrepreneur Forum & Community of Dragons!
Thanks to everyone who attended the first ever international Trans-Local Entreprenuer Forum on Thursday Nov 26th. On zoom, of course!
And then, three solutionary entrepreneurs pitched their projects to the ‘community of dragons’ – all of us in the audience who were eager to provide support. First up was 
Wow! It’s already the end of November! Time has flown by in this weird COVID-induced world in which we find ourselves. Just another thing challenging young adults as they seek to developed their livelihoods and careers, venture out into the world and build a life for themselves. For the last ten years, it seems ‘the future’ has been demolished and dismantled by financial crisis, austerity and brexit. If you’re under 30, it’s been one bloody WTF? after the next.
ALT/work began in September with a series of six online events with speakers drawn from the region, many of them generational peers, each with a powerful story of social enterprise and entrepreneurship. Many of the speakers were from enterprises that are members of the social enterprise networks in Devon and Somerset, and several are potential members. Each session included discussion time and network building. Each included music, even live music. All participants were encouraged to join a separate discussion forum enabling further communication and network building. Several social enterprises agreed to post volunteer and internship opportunities.
The efforts to attract the participation of our target group began with a design exercise with a small group of art students, ‘The Collective’. Their ideas were tranformed into an edgy aesthetic communicating the benefits of participation, of meaningful livelihoods and issues that matter. ‘The Collective’ produced a 
To state the obvious, political and economic change happens in all kinds of ways including through crisis and calamity. For those of us working for change at local, municipal and regional scales, this is the moment when many of the solutions we’ve been promoting are needed and the conditions for building the foundations for longer term change are favourable. There’s much to explore on this topic, obviously, but let’s just focus on a few points which might inspire immediate action and kick off a continuing conversation in our wider community of changemakers, and especially here in the South West, UK.
The past decade has seen social media evolve from being something that was considered useful to do, to being pretty much essential for most businesses to reach out to their audience.
In Totnes, on May 16th, the ballroom of the Royal Seven Stars was absolutely packed with people from the community looking to invest their time, money and skills with four local entrepreneurs who were pitching for support.
REconomy Centre Totnes 