News & Events
Re-Capturing knowledge and forging new relationships
The past 18 months have been challenging for everyone, but one thing we know about small business owners is that they are incredibly resilient, innovative, and adaptable. Supporting, the development of local small and micro businesses is what makes running the Captured programme so rewarding and inspiring.
This year, our new partnership with The Millin Charity saw us deliver a tailored version of the Captured programme called Your Enterprise to a cohort of female small business owners from the North East. The Millin Charity works with women who are typically defined as hard to reach, who face multiple disadvantages due to lack of local opportunity, language barriers, limited skills & education, cycles of ongoing poverty, racial discrimination and lack of self-belief. Through engaging with The Millin Charity, women gain the confidence and skills to not only achieve their goals but to improve their well-being, their connections, and their opportunities.
The Your Enterprise programme, delayed by the pandemic, launched by Zoom in April 2021 with a cohort of seven amazing women who Millin have supported to establish businesses including cake making, Portuguese vegan food, arts and crafts and natural hair products.
The Captured programme is now in its 5th year, and we've worked with over 140 small businesses in this time. Reflecting on how many businesses have participated in Captured and how they have developed saw the birth of ReCaptured, an opportunity for anyone that had taken part in Captured to come back and do the programme again, with a new mentor/manager and a fresh set of goals and challenges to explore. We were thrilled to see so many previous participants expressing an interest and we "Re-welcomed' seven businesses to the programme in May. Our regular Captured programme started in June with a fascinating cohort of business owners, including a chocolatier, a chef offering cook-along classes, an interior designer and a social enterprise supporting people in need.
Alongside the Captured, Re-Captured and Your Enterprise Programmes, we delivered a series of fantastic online masterclasses, which covered various business-related topics such as marketing on a budget, managing wellbeing, effective 2-way communication, identifying your superpower, and business finance.
Taking time out from running your business can be incredibly useful, it provides much needed space away from the ‘noise’ of work to reflect on how far the business has come and explore new ways to take it forward. Working with an experienced manager/mentor from an established, larger organisation gives a fresh perspective and new insights that help to develop ideas and solve problems. But one of the most valuable aspects of the programme is the community. The format of Captured, ReCaptured and Your Enterprise is safe, relaxed and relatively informal, which allows everyone to feel able to open up and share. In doing so, strong bonds are formed, and genuine connections evolve into a long-lasting network.
Due to the success of the move online for Captured, we will continue to deliver online in the immediate future, and our popular Masterclass series will also be online. We are however planning for in-person events for our Captured and Your Enterprise Alumni community, and even if we can't offer our Festive Fair in the Business School we will be producing our Festive Gift Guide featuring lots of our wonderful small businesses.
If you would like to join the Captured programme and be part of a growing and supportive community of small and micro businesses in the North East, apply now here or contact Project Lead Fiona Whitehurst Fiona.Whitehurst@ncl.ac.uk or Programme Coordinator Jo Singh Jo.Singh@ncl.ac.uk
Last modified: Mon, 13 Sep 2021 14:16:11 BST
