Social Impact Workshops

This workshop is for creative enterprises looking to: 

• Raise initial funding for your purpose-led startup 

• Plan out your next funding steps 

• Explore alternatives to traditional VC funding 

• Understand how mission and values impact funding choices 

• Build sustainable financing strategies for creative businesses 

• Understand traditional funding landscape: How VC works and how VC money can affect creative businesses and organisations 

• Clarify your mission and strategy: Explore mission, motivation and exit plan and how it can impact funding choices

• Master alternative funding options: Reflect on traditional funding (grants, debt, equity) and deep dive into alternative forms including patient equity, steward ownership, revenue-based financing, impact-linked financing and outcome-based financing mechanisms. 

• Build your funding roadmap: Create a personalised plan covering how to raise, when, what route, how much funding, and actionable next steps. 

• Network and connect: Meet other purpose-driven creative enterprises and potential Collaborators. 

Hybrid Format: One full day in-person and one day virtual - a blend of lecture, guided discussion, panels with external speakers, and interactive exercises where participants can learn new concepts and apply them immediately. 

Day One: Foundations & Alternative Models
(In-Person - Bedford Square) 

Day Two: Strategy & Action Planning (Virtual)

Key Dates: 

The programme is open to: 

• enterprises and legal entities registered and trading in the UK. 

• be from or support the screen and/or performance sectors.

• have an operations and/or project team based in the UK 

To ensure you get the most out of the experience, we are looking for creative organisations who are already working towards social impact and sustainability goals and are keen to unblock and accelerate progress, deepen their impact, and make clear plans for the next 3-12 months. 

You will need to be available in late-October for two full days in person in central London and to complete a small amount of pre-work in advance of the sprint.  

By the end of the two-day sprint, you should have:  

• Clearly articulated challenges to be addressed to meet your sustainability and social impact goals  

• A broad long-list of creative ideas for addressing these challenges 

• A prioritised shortlist of more developed ideas for addressing prioritised challenges, including impact success measures 

• A clear action plan with tangible steps to make top ideas a reality  

• Experience of using a number of design thinking tools for breaking down and tackling future goals 

The workshop will be centred on a series of interactive and collaborative exercises, where you will work together with other participants to refine and develop your ideas, learning from each others’ experience and benefiting from the diverse perspectives in the room.  

We will broadly follow the double-diamond design process: 

• Discover: Deeply understanding the problem by exploring the specific blockers between organisations and their sustainability and social impact goals, digging into how they are experienced and their root causes, and any common themes across the group. 

• Define: Collaboratively prioritising the most impactful challenges for each organisation to address, articulating clear problem statements to be solved for each.  

• Develop: Creative ideation to surface opportunities to solve these challenges, followed by collaborative iterative idea development to refine possible solutions and create light impact frameworks to ensure success. 

• Deliver: Prioritisation and action planning, so everyone leaves the workshop with a tangible set of steps to test their ideas and then implement them, alongside impact success measures.  

To help you get the most out of the two days, there will also be some light pre-work, ensuring you are able to come well prepared with specific social impact and sustainability goals, some wider perspectives from within your organisation, and some inspiration from other impactful organisations. 

Key Dates:  

The programme is open to   

• enterprises and legal entities registered and trading in the UK.   

•  be from or support the screen and/or performance sectors.    

• have an operations and/or project team based in the UK.    

Emily Dunne | Project lead and co-facilitator 

Emily is a freelance facilitator, researcher, strategist and project lead passionate about using design thinking approaches to turn problems into practical, actionable solutions for social and environmental impact. She started her career in corporate consultancy, where she supported major global financial services organisations to transform and innovate, before making the best decision of her life to transition into impact-led work. She now works exclusively with purpose-led organisations to help them overcome challenges and maximise their social and environmental impact.  

Jack Scriven | Co-facilitator 

Jack is a strategic consultant and design thinking specialist passionate about delivering positive and sustainable change for impact-driven organisations. With a foundation in finance and operations, he brings strong commercial acumen, analytical skills, and a human-centred approach to help organisations scale and innovate. After building his career in commercial roles at Sky and transitioning to purpose-led work, Jack now focuses exclusively on supporting mission-driven organisations to maximise their social and environmental impact through lean start-up methodologies and design thinking.