Starting up a Social Enterprise (or how to fail better…)

Starting up a social enterprise is frequently compared to jumping out of a plane and making a parachute on the way down. Six months into the start-up of HertsCreation, a Community Interest Company, it is useful to reflect on the heady mix of highs and disappointments that have accompanied our short existence. We are looking forward to beginning 2013, with a pilot Youth Cultural Ambassador (YCA) scheme and strong partners: the Royal Opera House Bridge and the Wroxham and Sir John Lawes Teaching Alliances . But there has also been learning for us in the experiment of setting up the new venture – including discovering what doesn’t work or attract support. A combination of British stoicism and competitiveness often militate against a public reflection on failure, but as Samuel Beckett put it in ‘Worstward ho’, if we are to fail, let’s “fail again, fail better”. After all, unlike skydivers, at least we can share our mistakes.

The early rejection of an application to Awards for All felt like a smack in the face for our new baby. How could anyone not see the merits of our nursery school partner leading a programme of local regeneration? Later, when cooler heads prevailed, we could appreciate the need to obtain more objective analysis that connected our ambitions to the needs of our partners. The experience also delivered a second, less obvious but in my view essential aspect of entrepreneurial learning: developing the knowledge and meta-skills to recover from knock-backs.

I have been struck by the importance of long-standing alliances, particularly with outward-facing, partnership-friendly organisations. These are the relationships that can sustain conversations through ups and downs, and steer us all towards new opportunities. It has been encouraging to be able to communicate with many people who are genuinely seeking new solutions and are willing to open their doors to new ideas and networks. As a new enterprise, we needed guides and some skill to align ourselves with partners. We have greatly benefited from the advice of a borough External Funding Officer who has helped us with objectivity in our application process. Managing occasional creative tensions, particularly with colleagues who have the security of full-time contracts, has been instructive. People who have the wit to hold on to these contracts in the current storm have something to teach me about resilience and realpolitik, in contrast with my own freelance freedoms in the absence of organisational responsibilities.

Most of our activity thus far has been with school projects. Two factors, both relating to risk, have shaped the flow of our work and are now informing our thinking around future development: working with partners who are prepared to take risks and, on a meta-level, understanding the conditions that are reducing or promoting risk-taking. We owe a lot to our lead school partner, Woolenwick Infants and Nursery School, and their innovative leaders for letting us carry on the relationships and practice we had begun with Creative Partnerships and extend a vision of creative learning within a whole-school teacher-led enquiry. Teaching Alliances embody the best of current educational policy by allowing leading teachers to share their expertise and rewarding schools as entrepreneurs, trainers and network leaders. Similarly, Bridge organisations foster enterprise and on a practical level provide vital funding to seed new networks and support emergent partnerships.

In other areas, such as marketing to schools, this year has been tough-going. Pressure on budgets is forcing artists to run school workshops almost at a loss. More worryingly, there are signs that schools’ obsession with cost-saving and targets is stifling risk-taking in working with the arts, or indeed with external providers in any capacity. Several teacher colleagues have reported the introduction of peer monitoring and no-notice classroom observation as another victory for the OFSTED culture of dampening the creative spirit through target-setting. The diminishing status of the arts within the new EBacc regime can only exacerbate this. These conditions demand a rethink of our ambitions and demonstrate, more broadly, the importance of people who are prepared to take a lead – and through that attract available resources. In 2013 we will be guided by a more realistic appraisal of what we ourselves can and can’t do, but also by a better understanding of the people we can work with, and more appreciation of their needs and ability to jump with us, to take a risk, maybe fail, maybe fly…

Martin Heaney is Co-Director of HertsCreation CiC

Tw: @HertsCreation