Catch up on Jane Binnion’s Radio Lancashire interview, recorded on the 23 June 2020, where she talked with Brett Davison about COVID-19 and the negative impacts on women in business, creating a further gender imbalance.
My experience of being a woman in business during Covid-19 pandemic
My name is Amanda Gallagher and I am the owner of Tinbox Angel, which is a micro-manufacturer of handbags and accessories.
In January 2016, I joined the first cohort of women who had applied for a place in The Growing Club. The Growing Club is a CIC organisation helping women run and grow their businesses to their full potential. It was an exciting time for my business, and I underestimated the impact that joining this group would have on my future success.
After attending a seminar where Jane Binnion (founder of the GC) presented the pros and cons of social media at my son’s high school, I was suitably impressed and decided to look her up and booked her for some Facebook training for my business. After knowing more about my business, Jane suggested I attend the taster session for a new support group she was hoping to create, for women in small businesses.
I was a little reluctant to go and thought ‘not another networking event’ but something resonated with me. I went along, nervously to the taster session. I was warmly greeted and met other women, some with ideas for new businesses and some with businesses more established than my own. All the women were so friendly and helpful and for once, I didn’t like a fish out of water, there was no competitiveness or underlying aim to this group, it was simply to help women like me achieve their potential.
It has been over four years since I attended this initial meeting, and subsequent monthly training group which developed from that first session, and as a result, my business is so different to how it was then. I regularly attend other training through The Growing Club, and there is always something of interest on offer. Also, I meet my peer group and trainer from the original cohort regularly to discuss any issues we have with our businesses. Jane regularly mentors me, especially when she can see my focus is slipping. This peer group has been invaluable to me and I have a deep affection for every single one of these women, and I have no doubt that without the support The Growing Glub gave us in the early stages, many of these wonderful businesses would not be around today.
After about three months of joining The Growing Club, the realisation hit me like a thunderbolt that my business didn’t need to be a passive income and it could actually support my family and potentially provide employment for other people. The Growing Club had started to give me the tools and the ambition to think big and took me completely out of my comfort zone. It also supported me to ensure these thoughts were achievable and not just dreams.
Suddenly my mindset changed. I had to look at why my business wasn’t creating me any income, never mind any profit, and at this point, I had to change the entire way I was operating.
The hardest thing and still is today is having to say no to people. I found early on in my journey, that making one-off designs for people was never going to work and neither was some of the products I had enjoyed making for so long. I had to look at simplifying my whole business.
I invested heavily in someone to help me with my marketing and a website, bought some industrial equipment, stopped doing the one-off designs, and concentrated on my range of products that I could produce quickly and effectively. My business was no longer a small cottage industry, selling at school fairs: I was sending products across the country and further afield.
The changes I have had to make haven’t always proved popular with my customers, and I have lost quite of few of them from my early years; many who liked to set me challenges for little or no reward, and I am glad that I have freed myself from the hold of that this kind of business had over me. They were stopping me developing my business any further.
I decided never to discuss my business with anyone other than my ‘cheerleaders’. All of my Growing Club peers are my ‘cheerleaders’: we are travelling the same paths. I have learnt so much from being too open, people always have an opinion or an idea, so I politely listen and smile and usually say, oh I must try that when I am quiet.
I have learnt to believe in myself and love what I do. Now and then, I say to myself, “Wow you are so good at this!”. This is not something I would ever have done a few years ago, not even 12 months ago. The imposter in me still rears her ugly head now and then, but I know when she does, I simply create a new design or read my reviews. It knocks her right off her perch!
I know people look at me, and think ‘who does she think she is?’ or ‘she wouldn’t have got where she was without her early customers’, but in my heart of hearts, I know I deserve to be here and it has been sheer hard work that has got me here today.
I would say I am still on a huge learning curve and if my business was a mountain, I’m probably only half the way up the steep incline, but I can see the summit and what it is going to look like when I get there. I have no doubt that without the support from The Growing Club I would not be at this stage and probably still making aprons for school fairs. I have had some really tough times personally and professionally over the past few years, and since having The Growing Club in my life, I know I have a lifeline, and I boy have used it, especially recently during the Covid-19 pandemic.
My business experienced amazing growth over the past three years and since moving to Lancaster City Centre in September, orders have been consistent and I was starting to considering how I could take it to the next level and possibly look at employing someone to help me. I was so busy and my business was consuming my every waking moment of my life.
My turnover had tripled from the previous year and I was trying my best to control the growth and also ensure I could still provide the level service people had come to expect from me. January sales came and went, and February is notoriously a quiet month, and I was looking forward to time to breathe before Spring orders came along.
This year, however, it didn’t happen. The internet orders didn’t arrive, Lancaster town centre was deadly quiet and customers were no longer popping in. It was a different story less than three weeks previously, where some days I had not managed to produce any products for people calling in placing orders.
I had no orders. I kept saying, it’ll come next week, but it didn’t. People were watching the news and the reports about Covid-19 and were worried witless about their livelihoods and wellbeing. The lockdown, although we knew it was coming, was such a shock.
The night of the announcement, I travelled to my workshop and loaded up my car with materials and equipment. This wasn’t going to be a problem for me, I had worked from home until six months previously – I would just have to turn the clock back, but this proved impossible. My large workbenches and heavy industrial equipment could not be taken home. My suppliers were closing down, one-by-one, the orders weren’t coming in, so I decided to give in to the lockdown, stay home and listen for guidance from the government.
All the time we are listening daily to the death rate going up, this virus was coming and no one was immune. Who can blame anyone for not feeling like a leather handbag was what they needed? My finances had been shot to pieces too. I couldn’t expect people to behave differently than myself.
After a difficult six months – the closure of my husband’s business coincided with my business moving into premises – my anxiety was at an all-time high and our finances were so stretched. This was sure to put the nail in the coffin on all my hopes and dreams.
Important announcements were made early on, that was going to change our situation, and for that, I am so grateful. They were allowing self-employed people to register for Universal Credits and also removing the minimum income floor for people, which was a huge relief for my family. Without this, I have no doubt I could not feed my family.
The government also insisted mortgage companies allowed three months’ holiday for people, another massive help for our household. In addition to this, because my business had rates relief on the business premises, I was eligible for the £10,000 grant. I applied for it, and never for one minute thought I would get it. Who had ever heard of the government giving this kind of money away? It was just unthinkable. It was at that point that I started to worry, but the £10,000 landed. I am grateful to the local council for being so proactive distributing this.
I have been so grateful for so much online assistance providing help in the form of training, mentoring, meditation, wellbeing, motivational help and peer groups. The Growing Club has been exceptional in the support they have offered. Isolation would have been a lonely place without all this help available and I will never forget the organisations and people who are providing these services I am using daily to help me get through it.
My son was doing his A-Levels and things may have changed for his future regarding awarded grades due to cancelled exams, which could affect his university choice. My daughter is in year 10 – another key year. I’m grateful my children are older, therefore the home-schooling hasn’t been a problem. We have a nice garden too, so isolation hasn’t been an issue, and we live next to the coast, so exercise has been a pleasure. We have enjoyed our time together. I feel blessed.
I know I will come back stronger than ever after having this time to concentrate on the engine room of my business and I am so grateful for the financial assistance I have been awarded. It’s only a short-term fix and I will have to work so hard to get back to where I was before the virus struck. I fear this will take years rather than months, but I know I have been one of the lucky ones.
Half of businesses are just one payroll away from cashflow disaster and it has made me realise that it’s so important to have a contingency plan in place. We have already lost some great British companies before Covid-19 and I know we will lose more before we come out of this.
We are all human and we all need help sometimes. In this instance, most of us have needed help and for once, I think we will be better people for it. If only so many people hadn’t had to lose their lives during this crisis.
2020 is a year never to be forgotten.
We are really excited to be offering once again, a fully-funded six-week skills training course for women in the Morecambe area, starting on the 15 January 2020.
‘The Sowing Club’ course has been funded by the European Union’s Social Fund. The course will benefit women who are currently searching for a job, in further education or self-employment and who fit into any of the following categories:
Our training sessions are provided in small and supportive group settings – we know this method gets the best results for you. We will be covering confidence building, how to maximise your existing skills, benefiting from support systems, problem-solving and how to plan for future opportunities.
The founding Director of The Growing Club, Jane Binnion, says:
“We have just finished the first course which ran at the Women and Enterprise Hub in Lancaster, and the results amazed even us. Women have said their experience was life-changing and everyone felt much more confident and focused on their future. It is fantastic what just 15 hours of good attention in small groups can achieve.”
Jane Binnion
A previous attendee of The Sowing Club said:
“The Sowing Club has been useful to meet women with a tremendous passion for life, brilliant creative ideas and an attitude that will shape a great future for every one of us. Gaining support, being positive and overcoming adversity has been the main themes, and I have benefited from the collective knowledge and input.
“I have particularly benefited from the moral support, and challenges to think and speak positively about the future; to be creative; to get on with it. To believe I can do it. I have benefited from being encouraged about my own ideas and from the positivity in the room.
“I think the continued surrounding support of The Sowing Club women will be vital to encourage and build my confidence.”
You can find the link to register for the upcoming course here.
From Wednesday 15 January (The Spring course begins on Tuesday 18 February 2020 at the Women and Enterprise Hub, White Cross Business Park, Lancaster.)
Stanley’s Community Centre, 78-83 Stanley Road, Heysham, Morecambe, LA3 1UT
10.00hrs-12.30hrs
Contact us! Jane or Lisa at The Growing Club would love to help. Call 01524 383846, text 07892 712417 or email admin @thegrowingclub.co.uk
For the last three years, The Growing Club has taken part in the Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas programme, or SIMRA, for short.
The project is an EU-funded scheme under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. The description of the Horizon fund is:
“Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.”
European Commission, Horizon 2020
The aims of the SIMRA project are to examine social innovations in agriculture, forestry and marginalised rural areas across Europe and the Mediterranean region in particular.
As The Growing Club, we have been supported by Lancaster University, which is a SIMRA partner. Since 2017, Dr Sophie Alkhaled at the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the Management School has been observing and working closely with our co-founder, Jane Binnion as the English case study for SIMRA’s Innovation Actions. Jane has guest-lectured on Sophie’s modules on numerous occasions, inspiring undergraduate students with her experiences and resilience as a social entrepreneur and innovator.
On the 26 September, we took part in a SIMRA – Social Innovation Action – workshop at Lancaster University, led by Dr Sophie Alkhaled, where we were given the opportunity to meet other Social Innovation projects like the Sewing Café Lancaster. We heard from the café’s Kiki Callihan, where she talked passionately about the aims of the project – improving sustainability while encouraging community wellbeing and cohesion through skill-sharing. The workshop was a supportive space to share our work so far with Lancaster City, Lancashire County and Cumbria County, along with the Federation for Small Business, Boost Lancashire – as stakeholders.
Through engaging in partnerships with agencies like the above – along with business networks – we’ve reached policymakers, allowing us to advocate for the voices of the many women within our organisation.
Jane Binnion, founder and director of The Growing Club, said:
“It’s been an absolute honour to be the English case study for SIMRA. I have personally felt incredibly supported by Dr Sophie Alkhaled – she’s been someone I can talk ideas and thoughts through with. Through SIMRA, we’ve been lucky to fund Katie Birks, a Growing Club graduate, to design and build us a fantastic new website has been such a boost to our organisation, reaching a wider audience.
“I recently went to a social innovation think tank in Aberdeen. I was made to feel very welcome there and it felt good to be a part of an international initiative. I had never thought of The Growing Club as a social innovation prior to this, but knowing that we are being placed in that category, feels as though we are achieving our goals on a bigger level.”
Another excellent project which is of great interest to The Growing Club and is under SIMRA, is the Economic Empowerment of Women in Deir El Ahmar, 75 kilometres from Beirut.
The project is centred around homemade food, which has been turned into a business opportunity for local women from the village of Deir el Ahmar.
Through selling items like jam, pickles, dried fruits and delicacies, the women are supported financially with a sustainable business model which impacts community cohesion and partnership. It also serves to enhance the confidence and skills of the women, which helps with wellbeing and economic independence for them and their families.
This is a really powerful example of a how investing in women brings a good business return on many levels and links well to a quote spoken on International Women’s Day in 2003, by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan:
“When women thrive, all of society benefits, and succeeding generations are given a better start in life.”
Kofi Annan, 2003
We have retained that quote within The Growing Club as a strong principle in our messaging.
The Growing Club’s work comes under SIMRA’s ‘marginalised rural areas’ section, with our social enterprise’s mission to support women in business – particularly women who are side-lined from success by a variety of reasons, including through disabilities, lack of funding, in receipt of benefits or low pay and also, not having the correct support infrastructure to have a sustainable business.
Through the delivery of our unique training programme, which was created to address the gaps in small business training and education for women, our peer-support network of other women business owners has been transformative.
We’ve been running successfully as a not-for-profit organisation for three years, with over 80 women from across the north-west of England joining our business training course, Bloom and Grow, where women learn the business skills required to build their business to a sustainable level.
But we’re not just interested in women who are already running their own businesses. Our organisation is rapidly making a difference to other groups of Lancashire women.
Our pre-start-up programme is called The Sowing Club, where we help women who are deemed to be socially disadvantaged. Our course initially ran across Lancaster and Morecambe, inspiring 40 women who were in receipt of benefits or in low-paid work, to re-engage with their skills and dreams to create a better life for themselves and their children. The women had incredibly varied backgrounds, all ages from the mid-20s to early 60s, with women taking part who had disabilities, women refugees and women who have escaped domestic violence. A new cohort of this programme is currently running, funded by the European Social Fund.
Roots and Shoots is our start-up course, which follows on from The Sowing Club, where women will be ready to start their own business. This course is a 12-month funded programme, focussing on how to start and grow a business that is sustainable.
Our organisation has worked with nearly 300 women so far.
In 2013, the MP for Basingstoke, Maria Miller, wrote:
“To secure the recovery, we need to do more to maximise our competitiveness and harness female talent, both for the benefit of the UK economy and for the financial security of women and their families.”
Maria Miller MP, 2013
Similar findings were identified in a 2016 Deloitte report, which showed that an increase in the rate of female-led new business to 10% would contribute £180bn to the UK economy by 2025.
A March 2019, a parliamentary briefing looking at women in business and their participation in the UK labour market found that 19% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK with employees were led by women in 2017.
It also showed that women were less likely than men to be involved in entrepreneurial activity, which includes owning or running a business less than 3.5 years old.
Encouragingly, figures from June 2018 showed that 29% of directors of FTSE100 companies were women. In the FTSE250 (the next largest 250 listed companies outside the FTSE100), 24% of directors were women.
This is great progress, but we must not forget socially disadvantaged women who also have so much to offer.
We support women in business and women who want to start a business, bridging the gaps in business education and supporting those women who have been left behind.
We use a peer-based support model, using mentors and role models, which is where so many women feel isolated in business due to the lack of support in this way. Our training programmes help women to grow in confidence whilst reconnecting with their existing skills and goals.
An example of how we supported women to reclaim their personal worth is through a recent course that we facilitated at The Growing Club. Sunflowers was a training programme especially for women aged 50+ who are unemployed, unwaged or facing redundancy. Redundancy is a huge challenge in this age bracket for women, due to a variety of barriers they come up against securing further employment.
One of the biggest blocks for us currently, is the Universal Credit system. We work closely with local Jobcentres, however, Universal Credit is still so new and grave mistakes are being made that impact women, including some not being referred to the New Enterprise Allowance scheme, when they are absolutely entitled to be. Helping women with no capital to start businesses is hard enough and this has had the biggest impact on the morale of our course attendees and additionally, on our outcomes.
A crucial aspect for women in business that is often forgotten about is wellbeing. We’ve just launched a new project called Healthy Biz, Healthy You, funded by Sport England. The course focuses on the health and wellbeing of women in business, which is a downfall for so many women.
We researched some of the reasons why women in business neglect their self-care. Responses were varied, but sobering, from women stating they feared failure, couldn’t switch off and feeling guilty for not being constantly available work-wise. This is often because women are still doing the double-shift: working full time and still carrying the biggest share of domestic tasks. This impacts upon health and wellbeing greatly. We address that through a bespoke exercise and meditation programme, teaching women to incorporate our methods throughout their routines.
We’re genuinely grateful to have been part of the SIMRA project. It’s changed our perspective of how we see ourselves. Through continuing our work as The Growing Club – a social innovation – we will ensure that we bridge the gaps in business education for all women who attend our courses, through providing powerful mentorship and quality peer-support. These factors are crucial for women to build and grow sustainable businesses
It was at this meeting I realised The Growing Club may be a great option for me as a business training course.
For me, The Growing Club came along at the perfect time. A few months before I started the very first Growing Club course as a member of ‘cohort 1’, I had taken a huge leap. I had worked for the NHS in mental health service for 14 years and decided to finally start work as a photographer and creative workshop facilitator (a long-held dream of mine).
One of the biggest struggles was leaving a close-knit team environment, to going solo. I had never run a business before either and so the offer of a course to help me get to grips with business basics was invaluable. Being part of The Growing Club course helped me gain clarity regarding my business focus.
I decided to follow my passion for portrait photography and started saying ‘no’ to the jobs I disliked. The support from my GC crew had the biggest impact. To travel this road with a group of fabulous businesswomen, all looking out for each other was so important (and remains so).
Once the course was over, I joined The Growing Club Graduates scheme and still meet regularly with members of my cohort and those who have been through the course since.
I then took an opportunity to join Jane in co-running the start-up programme, Roots and Shoots. We are now on the second group and it’s another valuable addition to the ever-growing options for women needing business support and guidance.
I have created many images for The Growing Club’s promotion too. I love how women stay involved in the organisation, for years after their initial courses have ended.
The regular reminders to create a vision and set intentions have become so important to me and my business. One recent and powerful example began when Jane and I sat down over 12 months ago to discuss my goals as part of a mentoring session. I identified my passion for creative portraiture and that I would like to have my first photography exhibition in a year’s time from that point. One year later, I was stood in front of 70 people who had come to the launch of my ‘Ablaze!’ exhibition in Morecambe. It was wonderful and surreal.
I have taken away so many nuggets that I try to remember on a regular basis. My favourites include:
“Your customers are looking for you, so make yourself as visible as you can be.”
“Don’t compare yourself to others, just focus on YOU!”
“Look after yourself! If you’re not healthy, your business isn’t either”
“Women are awesome at supporting one another!”
If you’re a woman in business, I encourage you to get involved in The Growing Club. You will gain so much, but additionally, you also have so much to offer, whether your business is currently an idea or you’re well-established.
Ginny’s website: www.gkoppenholphotography.com
FB page: www.facebook.com/ginnykoppenholphotos/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ginnykopp/
Last week, we received a grant from Sport England, to fund a brand-new project: fitness and relaxation for women running small businesses.
Women and fitness is not a new concept of course, and there are many examples of initiatives aimed at getting women and girls to take up sports.
But here at The Growing Club, we are focussing specifically on women business owners.
We help women to set up and grow sustainable businesses. We’ve worked with over 300 women so far, but time and time again, the thing that we see which blocks sustainability is the lack of self-care. Whilst for many women running smaller organisations self-care is seen as a bit of a luxury, the reality is self-care is essential, because if you are a sole trader, what happens to the business if you become unwell?
Recently, a question was put to women in business on a Facebook group, asking: what stops women taking care of themselves? The answers were sobering:
All of these issues are down to women still doing the double shift: working full time and still carrying the biggest share of domestic tasks. This obviously impacts women who own micro-businesses more, as they are less likely to be able to afford help at home, such as a cleaner, nanny etc.
Not addressing this will mean we do not address the rate of failure amongst women small business owners. And this sums up why many women feel they have to quit business…“The reason I gave up was because I never had downtime. I never felt I could refuse a call.”
But it’s a bigger issue than that even. We have seen a very disturbing trend when it comes to women’s health, with a significant increase in strokes, heart attacks, diabetes and an all-time record high of burnout.
It was shocking to discover that each year, twice as many women die of a stroke than breast cancer – did you know that? And the risk of stroke is a third higher for women in stressful jobs, because we eat fast food, self-medicate, stop exercising and pile the weight on. Heart disease kills six times as many women than breast cancer every year. In the UK, an average of 65 women per day dies of heart disease.
The crazy thing about those statistics is that we could really reduce those figures with some simple lifestyle changes. And that is what our course, Healthy You, Healthy Biz is all about.
We all know the clichés: put your own oxygen mask on first; you can’t pour from an empty cup…and so on.
We know it, but we don’t act on it and in fact, self-care becomes just another stick to beat ourselves with, as we try to relax slumped and exhausted on the sofa with a glass of wine and bar of chocolate, mindlessly scrolling Facebook.
The aim of our initiative is to use The Growing Club ethos that women have come to trust: peer support, buddying and creating a safe space, to work together as a group on our eight-session course.
Healthy You, Healthy Biz is designed so that women are able to incorporate some form of exercise into their daily or weekly routine so we are making it accessible with no fancy equipment required…think cans of baked beans rather than dumbbells!
We’ll be using a pick-and-mix exercise programme, which includes dance, strength work, walking, yoga and Pilates. But because we have found women are unable to relax, we are also adding simple meditation and self-massage. We believe that if we can learn to relax, we are more likely to be able to jump off that never-ceasing hamster wheel and make time for ourselves generally.
“It was a courageous act that started with acknowledging that they had needs, that their needs were important, and that those needs deserved to be met.”
Sharanya Sekaram
This is not an easy process, but our work is all about addressing the hard stuff.
The first course started on Friday October 18th in Lancaster and is proving to be a huge success. The next course is in Morecambe and starts Monday January 13th. You can book on that course here.
There will then be two more courses at different locations with varying days and times, to make it as accessible to as many women running small enterprises as possible.
For more information, please email jane@thegrowingclub.co.uk or call Jane on 07521 314926
The Growing Club CIC is a social enterprise based in Lancaster designing and delivering enterprise skills courses for women.
The co-founder of The Growing Club, Jane Binnion, is a finalist for a Lifetime Achievement Award from She Inspires.
Here, Jane tells us a little about herself, her background and how she came to create a successful social enterprise to help women in business on all levels.
“After a tonsillectomy went wrong when I was four-years-old, I was left with a lifetime of speech and hearing problems. And yet now I stand in front of groups and talk about things that are important to people, including doing business differently and defining success on our own terms. Despite years of being in and out of hospital and speech therapy, it seems I was always meant to do this.
“I also grew up experiencing domestic violence, in a poor working class family. I left home at 16. Somehow, I put myself through sixth form, despite living alone in a
bedsit.
“In an interview at Essex University, they saw something in me and offered me an unconditional place to study sociology. That was my escape and I then spent the summer volunteering on a kibbutz.
“From there, I did postgraduate youth and community training and was a youth worker for 20 years in the more difficult and socially deprived areas of Birmingham and Lancashire.
“At 34 I became a single mum and raised an amazing daughter who came on fantastic adventures with me, including volunteering in a remote village in central Ghana.
“Whilst employed as an advocate in a young men’s prison, a shoulder injury left me and my daughter just £80 a week Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) to live on. I thought we were going to lose the house as my injury left me unable to drive. So I set up a business from home which, other than having my daughter, was the best thing I’ve ever done.
“At the age of 10, my daughter was diagnosed with dyspraxia. We then discovered I also was dyspraxic. That led me to write the first ever children’s storybook about Dyspraxia – a beautiful book called You’re So Clumsy, Charley. The emails I get from parents about the difference that the book has made to their children’s self-esteem is a huge reward to me.
“My next book was The Heart of Sales, an ethical sales skills book, as so many business owners struggle with the concept of sales and selling as part of a business.
The Growing Club was an experiment I started through my own business – Ethical Business Training, as I saw a real gap in business training and support for women running micro-businesses.
So back in 2016, myself and Rachel Holme invited women to work with us on a 12-month programme and the rest is history, as they say.
We now have a thriving social enterprise and have already had more than 250 women go through our courses from all over North West England.
“Despite my disabilities and start in life, through working as a youth and community worker, women’s self-defence trainer and business trainer, I have given hundreds and hundreds of women the confidence to stand their ground, develop their skills and follow their dreams.”
We’re delighted to announce, that in conjunction with The Smallwood Trust and Morecambe’s socially-conscious design brand, Textile Candy, we will once again be offering a popular craft and design skills training course held in Morecambe.
Beginning on the 12 April 2019, Crafty Women is an eight-session weekly course, providing a unique opportunity for women crafters and makers to develop the skills and confidence to start their own ventures, with support and guidance from business trainers and women already successfully running their own design and craft businesses.
Crafty Women is a fully-funded course for local women who are in receipt of benefits or low pay and is run over eight weekly sessions at Textile Candy.
Sessions will focus around market research, getting serious about money, marketing, sales, branding and will include workshops such as social media, photography and using global handmade online marketplace, Etsy, as a sales tool.
The Growing Club has been running for three years, and we’ve seen over 60 women from across the north west graduate from the business training course and upwards of 160 women taking part our courses, which also have expanded.
Through business training and research carried out by The Growing Club, our founder and director, Jane Binnion, has discovered many inequalities and gaps for women in business, especially in start-ups.
Jane says:
“When starting out in business, women will largely focus on areas where they feel most comfortable, but with the right support, they will grow. There are more than 1,000 women on out-of-work benefits in the Lancaster district and an unrecorded number of women that do not show on the statistics. In this latter case, they tend to be women who are considered unavailable for work due to being, for example, carers.
“Our courses provide bespoke training to bridge gaps in business education for women, whilst providing a strong peer support network, enabling women to run sustainable businesses.”
The first Crafty Womencourse concluded at the end of March 2019, and was a positive experience for everyone who attended. Feedback from the training highlighted significant benefits from women who completed the course, ranging from improvement in their health and wellbeing after attending the training, to improving self-employment outlook.
One course attendee had previously felt alienated from the world of work, due to being a woman over 50. Following the training, she talked about her experience:
“I really enjoyed taking part in the Crafty Women course. I hadn’t worked for some time because of health problems and as part of my rehabilitation from illness, I took up sewing, which really helped my recovery.
“I didn’t want to go back to the same work area, so I decided to take part in the Crafty Women training course.
“I found the course was comprehensive and covered so much in the way of content. From branding, costings, photography, right through to how social media can be applied to maximise sales – the training was broken down into achievable tasks and I learned so much.
“I have gained confidence and skills, alongside reassurance from women who are already running their own successful businesses. It was incredibly encouraging to receive support at this level.
“I previously I felt there would be limitedpotential for women over 50 in the workplace, due to society’s views on older workers. This course has given me hope and self-value and I’d highly recommend it.”
Some women who completed the course have progressed to join the social enterprise’s women in micro-manufacturing group and one woman has also enrolled in The Growing Club’s business growth programme.
Places are still available for this exceptional training opportunity. Applications are particularly welcomed from the the west end of Morecambe area.
If you’d like more information on the The Growing Club and how to register, please contact us on either admin@thegrowingclub.co.uk or call 07892 712417.
The course dates for Crafty Womenare:
Friday April 12th
Tuesday April 16th (not the Friday as it’s a holiday)
Friday April 26th
Friday May 3rd
Friday May 10th
Friday May 17th
Friday May 24th
Friday May 31st
*Please note this course is now full: spaces are available for the next course – Crafty Women 3, beginning in June*
The session times run from 10.00hrs to 12.30hrs
*Main image courtesy of Ginny Koppenhol Photography.
