Archive for the ‘Interesting stuff’ Category

Social B2b — The Launch

Posted on: March 11th, 2012 by Hayley No Comments

Mon­day 5th March was the Social B2B event for Future Arts. It took place in Project Space Leeds, an eclec­tic con­tem­po­rary art gallery over­look­ing the River Aire. Local politi­cians and busi­ness­men gath­ered to net­work and learn about cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­ity. As a new Future Arts vol­un­teer this was my first chance to expe­ri­ence an event, and not only did I help it come together but I saw behind the scenes what it takes to make it a success.

At around 4:30, staff and vol­un­teers arrived at White­hall Water­front to pre­pare for the event. There was no time to enjoy the cap­ti­vat­ing art­work as we hus­tled to put up signs, set up the bar, and brace our­selves for the arrival of the guests. Despite sev­eral set­backs, like not hav­ing cor­rect name tags for every­body, the venue was pre­pared by 5:00 as guests started to arrive.

The friendly atmos­phere before the speak­ers arrived set me at ease as guests enjoyed a com­ple­men­tary drink and began to min­gle. There was a clear sense of cama­raderie as I heard guests as well as staff dis­cuss their busi­ness goals and aims. When Tom Rior­dan arrived every­one gath­ered into another room to lis­ten to his insight­ful speech. Being the CEO of Leeds City Coun­cil it was polit­i­cal in nature but enjoy­able as he spoke with insight and expe­ri­ence. After an oppor­tu­nity for the guests to net­work, Sally-Anne Green­field fol­lowed suit with a charis­matic speech about the impor­tance of social enter­prise that had every­body cap­ti­vated. Other speak­ers from Future Arts con­tin­ued to inspire with touch­ing accounts of the social return that busi­nesses can enjoy from eth­i­cally buy­ing prod­ucts and services.

The high­light of the night was the per­for­mances from some of the Future Youth that have ben­e­fited from pro­grammes and work­shops pro­vided by Future Arts. I was taken aback by the qual­ity of these per­for­mances, and it was clear from the audience’s reac­tions that they too did not expect how tal­ented these young per­form­ers were. This was the per­fect con­clu­sion to such an influ­en­tial evening because it showed first hand how great the out­come can be when a busi­ness invests in the community.

Over­all the evening was a great suc­cess, with guests hav­ing the oppor­tu­nity to col­lab­o­rate and expe­ri­ence the ben­e­fits that eth­i­cal buy­ing can pro­vide. The staff were in good spir­its as guests began to slowly trickle out, leav­ing us to think back on the night.

Placard Marketing

Posted on: March 8th, 2012 by Damon No Comments

Stand­ing glee­fully beside a field of horses, I think it’s safe to say my plac­ard mar­ket­ing cam­paign didn’t get off to the great­est of starts. At best I was hop­ing that some bloke walk­ing his dog would dis­cover me pro­mot­ing Future Arts and that he would spread the word about us. It wasn’t to be, and despite not get­ting the fairy tale begin­ning I wanted, it has been an exhil­a­rat­ing adven­ture since. (more…)

So your doing what? Volunteering, ah right?

Posted on: February 20th, 2012 by Margaret No Comments

A brief look at my experience

The job mar­ket is dif­fi­cult in cur­rent cli­mate and for me the whole sit­u­a­tion was dri­ving me crazy. With 1.04 mil­lion 18–24 year olds unem­ployed, actu­ally get­ting a job inter­view was the hard bit. As some­one who had worked from the age of 15, being unem­ployed I found men­tally and phys­i­cally strain­ing. Even as some­one who had a degree, I was find­ing it dif­fi­cult, hav­ing applied for grad­u­ate pro­grams and not get­ting any­where was soul destroy­ing, often being told that I was overqual­i­fied for posi­tions I was keen to get into. To tell the truth depres­sion took hold as the same rou­tine dragged on for nearly three months. It was at this point that my mum sug­gested the won­der­ful world of vol­un­teer­ing, some­thing I had done as a teen,  mil­len­nium vol­un­teers,  but to which I hadn’t even thought about. My first instinct was to go to Vol­un­tary Action Leeds and see pre­cisely what they had to offer, I mean I’m not great with kids, ani­mals, nature is a big no no, and sick peo­ple, well obvi­ously I empathise with them but its not really me. I saw adver­tise­ment but the major­ity took, 3–4 weeks to process my appli­ca­tion, could I sur­vive that long? Seri­ously it seemed like a long draw out process. Three days or so later, an adver­tise­ment popped up on two places that had been watch­ing, both adver­tis­ing vol­un­tary place­ments at Future Arts.

Future Arts, was some­where that was dif­fer­ent, it was some­where that firstly I had never heard of, but who had a great web­site, yes I judged the place on the web­site. I have always been inter­ested in dig­i­tal media and was keen to get into event man­age­ment and PR. Both of these were areas that Future Arts catered for. So I sent off my CV, and cov­er­ing let­ter, I was keen to do this so I sent off a ref­er­ence. Two days went by and noth­ing. So I e-mail them again, the next day I get a phone call, say­ing they were really sorry had been really busy and would I come for an induc­tion the fol­low­ing Friday.

After my induc­tion, I started the fol­low­ing Tues­day, I was a lit­tle fright­ened but the staff and other vol­un­teers were so nice and even the young peo­ple were polite. I started on my first big task which would be plan­ning an event for the launch of a new prod­uct. I was thrilled and as my time grew and my con­fi­dence grew, I received more respon­si­bil­ity. I felt like I was mak­ing a dif­fer­ence, and as the work towards the event veered off I wanted to help in other areas of the busi­ness such as admin­is­tra­tion and pub­lic rela­tions. My expe­ri­ence at Future Arts was sec­ond to none, I had never worked any­where where I felt that the work I was doing was mak­ing a dif­fer­ence to soci­ety as a whole.

 

If want to vol­un­teer with Future Arts, please e-mail your CV and Cover let­ter to volunteers@futurearts.co.uk

 

 

 

With regards to Maria Miller and Unemployment

Posted on: February 6th, 2012 by Damon No Comments

This coun­try will fall apart imme­di­ately if the 400,000+ jobs that are avail­able aren’t filled shortly by its pop­u­la­tion. Accord­ing to Maria Miller the unem­ployed are reluc­tant to take up any of these vacan­cies and that’s why there are so many of us con­tent with life on the dole. So with the unem­ployed unpre­pared to do the graft to save Great Britain, it’s now up to those who already work to take up more work whilst the feck­less carry on par­ty­ing as if it’s the last days of Rome.

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