Collaborating to do social good (and a cuppa tea too)
by
When we heard of What's Brewin, the monthly meet up in London that involves collaborative chat over a cuppa tea, Startacus thought it best to make a pot, take ten minutes out and ask the What's Brewin team a few questions to find out more...
What's Brewin is the brainchild of Make:Good a Design Studio based in London. With Startacus' own collaboration platform nearly ready to unleash itself on the World, we spoke to Catherine Greig, Owner of the Business, to find out more about their businesses and how they involve collaboration to make and do social good.
So because I found out about What's Brewin indirectly via Make:Good, I've now got slightly confused...Make:Good is a Design Studio, so are you are social enterprise type design studio or do you focus on 
social good type projects? Explain all!
make:good is a design studio which focus on projects that have a social value. All of our projects involve us spending time in a space, meeting and engaging with people who live, work & play around the area and trying to understand what positive change would mean for those communities. Change means different things in different places and to different people so our engagement process means that sometimes we are designing parks & playgrounds, sometimes we are supporting new enterprise and sometimes we developing campaigns to support behaviour change. It is really varied and exciting!
We love the idea of What's Brewin, but can you explain to the Startacus readers, what exactly What's Brewin is?
What's brewin' is the space where we think about the issues that bubble up through the projects we work on & we think resonate with other creative practitioners working in the field of participation & engagement. We do, of course, think outside of this one hour a month! but it is really useful to have a structured time to bring other people in, share ideas about practice and get some insight because we don't want to end up just doing the same old stuff over & over again. We started by inviting a couple of people each and then those people pass their invite on to somebody they think would be interested so we get to meet more & more interesting and innovative folk.
The idea of passing the tea bag on at the end is great - but can you go back for a second meetup, or is your tenure up, when you pass the tea bag on?
We probably shouldn't say this but rules are made to be broken right? Some people come back because they are really interested in the next topic and want to keep involved in the dialogue. We also get some people who just find out about us and want to come along & that's OK as well!
Collaboration is key to Startacus and on the What's Brewin page you say that collaboration is going to help build the world we want to live in. Why?
Collaboration is so important because we don't live isolated lives or access isolated services so people need to work together in all senses. Our work is all about communities of people rather that a client of just one individual so we see the communities we work with as collaborators as well as the organisations we partner with & people whose skills we bring in on particular projects. Nobody does this stuff alone and for us a project isn't a success if a group we have been working with don't feel like they did it with us or, even better, think we just helped them out but really it was their project.
Cheers Catherine for your time and we hope to meet up at What's Brewin for a cup of tea sometime!
Join the Self Start society! If you like what you see here on Startacus and want to get involved yourself, why not become a member of our growing community by joining for free here!
Subscribe to our newsletter
If you would like to receive our startup themed newsletter, full of the latest startup opportunities, events, news, stories, tips and advice, then sign up here.
Artificial intelligence platform Ricochet is on an AI mission to find new business leads that fit the needs of your company.
From understanding more about how a business can invoice effectively to avoid late payments, to what debt recovery means, to how to take legal action against overdue debt.
The challenges of working with a business partner or another co-founder, as told by 12 of the UK’s top startup co-founders
This February 12th & 13th, global pre-accelerator program Startup Boost, will host a virtual demo day from their 'Fall programs' in Detroit, Dublin, Los Angeles, and New York.
Minute is an app that allows you to watch quality short films, tailored to the time that you have available. We took a look at this early-stage startup with a big vision.
Migrants are gonna surround us, With ideas! We take a look at Startup Weekend Dublin immigration...
Five reasons why every business could consider investing in coaching for their sales team.
The FinTech and PropTech startup which rewards tenants with improved credit for on-time rent payments...
.png)
SportTech Belfast startup Pitchbooking, secures £250k investment to help become the market leader in sports facility management.
From understanding more about supplier and business customer negotiations, to contracts, understanding heads of terms, to what should be included in a terms of contract.
Published on: 1st November 2012
If you would like to enable commenting via your Startacus account, please enable Disqus functionality in your Account Settings.
- Startup Weekend Dublin immigration aims to builds ideas not borders 7th Feb 2019 Migrants are gonna surround us, With ideas! We take a look at Startup Weekend Dublin immigration...
- Sports facility management platform Pitchbooking nets £250k investment 6th Feb 2019 SportTech Belfast startup Pitchbooking, secures £250k investment to help become the market leader in sports facility management.
- Too Good To Go raises further €6m to keep fighting food waste everywhere 6th Feb 2019 Fast growing tech for good app Too Good To Go raises a further €6 million to accelerate its mission to eliminate food waste globally, taking its total investment to €16m.
- Google+ for consumers shuts down 2nd April 1st Feb 2019 Goodbye Google+. The end date for Google+ for consumers (personal) has been announced as the 2nd April 2019. So what....now?
