We’ve been shortlisted for the SEYH Start Up Social Enterprise of the Year!!!

This last 18 months has been a bit of a whirlwind!! From registering the company in March 2021 to delivering our first Photovoice project a couple of months later at which point things REALLY took off!

Being shortlisted for this award is HUGE!! For me as the founder, for us as an organisation and to our HUGE circle of friends and supporters - I just wanted to express my gratitude to SEYH for shortlisting us, for everyone who has supported our journey over the last 18 months.

None of this would be possible without the support of my family, my wife Hayley and our two beautiful children. There is an enormous amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to keep this show on the road - late nights, weekends, I do my best to keep things in balance but anyone who has started up a business will know that you can’t just switch off on evenings and weekends.

To my co-director Will Baldry - thank you for your advice, guidance and trust. It’s not a small thing to sign up to become a Director of a company just because your friend has some crazy ideas about photography and community development! Your insights and experience have helped guide me through some very tough decisions!

I have also been blessed with a wonderful network of people who I am fortunate to count as friends - Claire Cook from Employability Solutions, Katie Peacock from Exclusively Inclusive who both supported Our Creative Connection right from the word go!! I cannot thank you both enough for your guidance, your help, your trust and your friendship!

God this is turning into an acceptance speech and there are two issues with that 1: I will invariably miss someone out and 2: we haven’t even won the thing (yet)!

Just know this: There are so many more people to thank and I will definitely put another blog together about what being shortlisted for this award actually means, for now perhaps it is enough to say THANK YOU!