social enterprise

The range of leisure activities offered by Social Enterprises is much wider than I first anticipated and our regional creative industries are fairly well dominated by the Social Enterprise Sector in terms of theatre, museums, arts centres and even an occasional cinema.

Over the weekend I enjoyed the offerings of two of these institutions. On Friday I went to Seven Arts Centre  in Chapel Allerton where I enjoyed some great tapas. I can’t claim much credit for the development of the centre which was completed in 2006, but literally a couple of weeks after moving into our house in 2005 we received an invitation to a barbecue celebrating the ground-breaking of the site to build the centre. We rsvped , naively  thinking everybody in the area had got one,  only to arrive realising everybody there had a historical link to the arts festival or were local pillars of the community, the invite was in fact for the previous owners of the house but I think we made adequate stand-ins and many of the people we met there are now our friends and the centre is a great community meeting place.

My wife, Susan who coincidentally also works for a Social Enterprise St.Vincents Support Centre, was away in Paris for the weekend and I had sole charge of our 20 month old son Jakob. To comply with the strictures of the challenge I took him to Eureka in Halifax. Eureka is a children’s museum with lots of hands-on exhibits which kept Jakob occupied for over 2 hours which is an aeon for a child that young.  Here is a picture of him being a chipmunk in the desert area.

Next week I am going to Hyde Park Picture House to see the Men who stare at Goats, the cinema is over 100 years old and one of Leeds few remaining independent cinemas and its only social enterprise cinema.

Tomorrow I am going to muse on what I am missing and whether Social Enterprise should enter the markets of my missing products.