Totally Locally

Totally Locally won The Springboard Entrepreneurs Award 2024 from Octopus Group! On Monday myself & Simon Waldren had the immense privilege of being invited to Octopus HQ for a day of a full day of strategic business advice and support on how to scale up for Totally Locally with Octopus Founder, Chris Hulatt and his team with Director of Policy Justine Duggan. We were nominated for The Octopus Springboard Entrepreneur Awards by Minister for Small Business Kevin Hollinrake, and, out of hundreds of entries from around the UK judged by cross-party MPs & industry leaders, we were one of the 5 organisations to win. It was an incredible day, and the advice and ongoing support from the Octopus team was invaluable. We had a great talk from and were interviewed by Jimmy McLoughlin OBE as part of the day too. I really loved meeting the other winners, who have created superb, innovative companies, all with a purpose to make the world a better place, including a Carbon Negative Whiskey Company, a cloth company saving tonnes of material from landfill, a training group for Neurodiverse Entrepreneurs, a company making period underwear (who fought successfully to have VAT removed on women's sanitary products) and a company de-carbonising companies & buildings. You can check them out on the links below. A huge thank you to Chris Hullatt, Kevin Hollinrake, Justine Duggan, Hattie Turner and everyone who worked with us on the day. And we got a nice trophy & a big pink Octopus! Links to the other excellent winners here: Cooper King Distillery wukawear GW Power-Safe Ltd Joyfully Different @rainbowfabrickilburn #Octopus #Entrepreneur #Awards

Well that was a unique venue for an awards ceremony! On Wednesday we attended the VisaUK Let's Celebrate Towns event held at the amazing House of Lords building. Speakers and presenters including Joanna Gosling, Denise Lewis DBE and Kevin Hollinrake. We were asked to help judge one award category and it went to a very deserving winner. There was an amazing buzz in the room from all the folks that are busy behind the scenes in many great towns, helping to make them even greater! Congrats to all the winners and we're sure the funds awarded will go to very fruitful uses. #totallylocally #visa #letscelebratetowns

Last week we took to the road for some Totally Locally work in #Richmond #northyorkshire followed by a return visit to our friends in #Ripon, all under our TownThrive package, which we have devised to work with local authorities and #BIDs to help activate High Streets at a grassroots level. After a walk around stunning Richmond with our Business Association hosts, we met a big crowd at The Black Lion Inn (a pub is always the best place for meetings like this). Our favourite bit of this sort of evening is after the presentation and informal Q&As, when all the ideas start flowing. Whereas most business meetings end with everyone running for the door as soon as it's over, we couldn't get people to leave! The positivity from everyone who attended has been overwhelming, both on the night and since. The next day we wandered Richmond and met some wonderful business people including Caygill Cycles (hand-building beautiful bikes in Richmond- https://lnkd.in/e3akVVyG), Pink Sundays - an incredible gift shop (https://lnkd.in/eCwZ38Q6), Granny's Kitchen (making cakes, pies sweets & more in the cafe on-site) https://lnkd.in/ecFJz-CR) plus loads more - and there was still a buzz from the night before's meeting. Richmond is great place with a lot to offer, but like many small towns they have their challenges. We know the meeting was the start of addressing some of those issues. Thank you to North Yorkshire Council for funding our visit and ORBTA business association for being our hosts. At our Ripon meeting, our main talk was about a holistic approach to building a digital high street to wrap around the traditional one - using the #TotallyLocally campaign alongside digital technology. This is something we are well into exploring by partnering up with a large tech company based in Yorkshire. Watch this space! #Richmond #northyorkshire #ruralcommunities #highstreets #towncentre #grassroots North Yorkshire Council Ripon BID

LETS CELEBRATE TOWNS 2024 AWARDS WIN £15000.00 FOR YOUR TOWN We are proud that we at Totally Locally are part of the judging panel for Visa’s Let’s Celebrate Towns Awards, in conjunction with British Retail Consortium. Let’s Celebrate Towns – run by Visa and supported by the British Retail Consortium – is a nationwide showcase, celebrating the hundreds of Towns across the UK that are helping businesses and communities to thrive. WINNING TOWNS WILL RECEIVE: £15,000 for your Town to put toward a community project or initiative. Provision of skills and education Help for winning Towns to upskill SMEs to enable them to thrive in a changing business environment.
Small businesses will be connected to experts for advice and support. You can enter individually or as a group / council / business group / BID etc, as long as it is about the whole town. This year’s national showcase will focus on key areas that are crucial to the current and future success of Towns. We want to hear the best examples from up and down the country, exploring Town initiatives and programmes that are overcoming challenges to promote and support thriving local economies. The four categories Business Environment     Infrastructure    People and Skills    Sustainability So give it a go - we would love a Totally Locally town to be amongst the winners! ENTER HERE - https://lnkd.in/e_pP6dr7 GOOD LUCK! #LETSCELEBRATETOWN Visa #shoplocal #independentretailers British Retail Consortium #highstreets

This week we had the immense privilege of speaking at the Leeds Building Society beautifully designed HQ to delegates from over 20 Building Societies & Credit Unions from across the UK, their CEOs and partners. The whole aim was to look at how community-led High Streets create not just financially sustainable places, but also socially cohesive and vibrant places to live. Totally Locally has never just been about High Streets. It's always been about empowering people to make the place they live a little better, and giving tools for those people to share that with their local communities. So we thought "Yeah, building societies fit with that". But we never realised just how much they did! The Conference was organised by GLORY & OneBanx - the people putting banking hubs into towns where banks have left, to keep cash on the high street. We listened to fascinating talks (which included a great opener from Kevin Hollinrake), Iain Nicholson MIPM, Ian Goodliffe (making data cool!) Lucy Crumplin Michael Heanue, Ben Nadel, Andrew Gall & Richard Fearon. We have always been aware that Building Societies operate differently from the normal corporate 'maximise profit over everything' school of operation, but we had no idea just what incredible assets to towns & communities they were. Firstly, being mutuals, for the benefit of the members who deposit money into those accounts which then drive the business. That in itself is worth supporting. The big eye opener for us was that whilst banks are closing physical branches at a crazy rate, Building Societies are OPENING new branches - often in those towns that the banks have deserted. And customers are loving it. Some building societies now have free social spaces where groups can meet at no cost, bringing people together to help with loneliness, organise local initiatives and groups and tackle social issues. And no you don't need to have an account to be part of it! Building Societies are setting up in places like libraries & village hubs to give access to services which wouldn't be financially viable in small places, like Newcastle Building Society. The Cambridge Building Society have an incredible scheme - Rent to Home - where first time buyers can rent one of their newly refurbished homes for up to 3 years, then CBS return you 70% of the rent you've paid to act as a deposit on buying your first house! There were so many more things like this that the building societies do, and of course they tie into local economies and keeping our High Streets thriving (and we got to show some people our favourite bits of Leeds too). Our great thanks to our friend Stuart Fearn MBE for inviting us along. As we say in Totally Locally - Support Your Local Anything! This definitely includes your Building Society! #highstreets #totallylocally #buildingsociety #localeconomy

Today we're at Leeds Building Society HQ joining other speakers to talk about invigorating the community, bringing building societies, community champions and government together. GLORY Kevin Hollinrake OneBanx Newcastle Building Society #buildingsociety #highstreetbanking #bankingsolutions Chris Sands Simon Waldren

Our first National Magic Tenner event starts tomorrow! There are 70 towns taking part and over 2,000 businesses that will be sharing how many local suppliers they support with each £10 spend... making that spend turn into £50... it's magic! There will be £10 offers in participating businesses to help spend those tenners :) Read more about it there: http://magictenner.co.uk This campaign is sponsored by Bira - British Independent Retailers Association