Year Here - Programme

YEAR HERE IS A POSTGRADUATE COURSE IN SOCIAL INNOVATION BASED IN LONDON

Year Here is about learning in the real world rather than in a lecture hall. Through three major projects in very different contexts, you’ll have multiple opportunities to build a smart, scalable response to some of society’s toughest challenges.

As a Fellow, you’ll leave us with a portfolio that is bursting full of projects, ideas and experiences – and go on to carve out an entrepreneurial career path.

To support you to build high-impact initiatives, we’ll give you:

FRONTLINE INSIGHT

It’s not about sitting in an ivory tower, designing policies and solutions for people. Instead, you’ll start by stepping into the shoes of a homelessness support worker or care home assistant and forge relationships with people whose lives are full of tough realities.

CUTTING-EDGE TRAINING

You’ll learn the ropes of subjects like service design, business model development and community organising with partners including Bain & Co, Assembly and New Philanthropy Capital. You’ll hear from social sector leaders like Lady Edwina Grosvenor, Neil Jameson and Lauren Currie.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Great leadership takes self-awareness, courage and critical thought. We support you to find your leadership path through coaching sessions, monthly mentoring and WildCamp, a wilderness personal development experience.

NETWORKING

You will leave us with a peer group of budding leaders and connections to our faculty. The programme is chock-full of opportunities to meet others in the social innovation world, and it culminates with GradFest, bringing together the whole Year Here family to celebrate our Fellows’ achievements.

FROM GATHERING FRONTLINE INSIGHT TO BUILDING A PORTFOLIO OF CREATIVE AND ENTERPRISING VENTURES, YEAR HERE IS AN ACTION-PACKED PROGRAMME.

In the first few months of the programme, you’ll be placed in a frontline organisation and challenged to lead an innovation project. Next you’ll play the role of consultant on a social innovation brief set by a real client. Finally, you’ll develop a social venture idea from scratch – prototyping it in the real world and pitching it to fellow entrepreneurs.

Throughout, you’ll be focussed on one of society’s most complex issues – the housing crisis, educational inequality, community resilience, vulnerable youth, or health and wellness.

We’ll give you a crash course in social innovation – from design thinking to social investment – through our five-week-long bootcamps, run in partnership with leading innovation players, and our venture lab that will take you through the building blocks of a social business. Learning will be immersive, intensive and based in the real world.

Across the whole programme, you will have regular coaching and mentoring sessions and access to plenty of networking events.

Year Here is a full-time commitment. Most parts of the programme will follow normal office hours, Monday to Friday, although there will be various evening events throughout the programme. There are five weeks of scheduled holiday in each programme. All programme activity (apart from WildCamp, our leadership development retreat) is based in London.

SUPPORT THOSE LIVING AT THE FRONTLINE OF INEQUALITY IN LONDON

For five months, you will help deliver critical social services to assist some of the most vulnerable in society and come up with new fixes to enhance the impact of your host organisation. Along the way, you’ll gain a deep insight into the lives of those that you work with and build a picture of the systems that shape their quality of life – for better or for worse.

Our placements are based in a range of contexts, from homelessness hostels and inner-city schools to elderly support services, community centres, GP surgeries and youth justice charities.

Our Fellows step into delivery roles such as:

Case Worker in a homeless hostel, helping residents to secure work and plan for living alone.
Learning Mentor at a Pupil Referral Unit for students who have been expelled from mainstream school, providing 1:1 support in class to children with behavioural difficulties.
Activities Coordinator in an older people’s service, leading activities to boost residents’ wellbeing.

MegNLYMCA

Meg Lewis at YMCA North London, a 153-bed hostel in Crouch End.

MirandaBBBC

Miranda Dixon in the garden of the Bromley By Bow Community Centre.

DamiLPS

Dami Fajobi with a student at Langdon Park School in Poplar.

NadiaBradbury

Nadia Daghistani at The Bradbury, a day centre for older people in Kingston.

SnehOrigin

Sneh Jani at a community event for older Origin Housing residents.

RachelSwan

Rachel Smith at a Swan Housing service for mums and babies in Basildon.

THE INNOVATION PROJECT

You’ll lead an Innovation Project to enhance the impact of your placement, being entrepreneurial and inventive in a resource-constrained context. Innovation projects might be service design fixes like Repair and Care or fledgling ventures like Fat Macy’s.

Repair and Care was designed by Sneh Jani while on placement with Origin Housing. She noticed that many older residents needed support – but weren’t asking for it. By embedding a simple welfare check into the outreach activities of Origin’s repairs contractors, Sneh developed a mechanism to spot vulnerabilities that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Meg Doherty launched Fat Macy’s while placed at YMCA North London as a series of supper clubs to help hostel residents build up a flat deposit without falling into this trap. The proceeds of each event went into a fund, available to residents as flat deposits when they were ready to move out.

INNOVATION BOOTCAMP

To kick off your innovation project, innovation bootcamp brings the cohort together for a crash course in social innovation – with sessions on design thinking, creative ideation and even improv.

The week culminates in the 24-Hour Challenge, where, given little more than a creative format and a small budget, Fellows design and produce a social impact initiative in 24 hours. Over the years, we’ve driven voter engagement, raised awareness about air pollution, launched Hackney’s first ‘Human Library’ and brought Detroit’s Sunday Soup movement to the East End.

FIRESIDE FRIDAYS

Every other Friday, the whole cohort comes together for a day of training, reflection and project work.

Fireside Fridays could be a group reflection on what you’re learning on placement, a leadership development session with School of Life co-founder Sophie Howarth, or a chance to work on your projects with innovation experts. Fireside Fridays are a precious opportunity to catch up with the rest of the cohort, and they usually finish with a drink or two at the studio to unwind after a full-on fortnight on placement.

RIGOROUS WORK FOR REAL CLIENTS – WELCOME TO THE SOCIAL INNOVATION AGENCY

Midway through the programme, you move into our central London studio as Year Here turns into a social innovation agency for eight weeks.

Working in small teams, the Fellows produce tangible outputs for clients, including local government, social enterprises and corporates using a wide range of community engagement methods. You’ll work closely with senior staff and get expert input from our partners Bain & Co and Soundings, among others.

This project will give you a taste of working as a consultant, insight into the interface between government, business and society, and a chance to flex your creative muscles.

Often these projects provide the inspiration or market insight for new ventures like Supply Change and Square Circle.

ASSEMBLY

Digital marketing agency Assembly (formerly Forward PMX) wanted to understand how it could be truly pioneering in developing a business model where social purpose and impact are a core part of its strategy on par with profit. This project involved stakeholder interviews and creating an actionable roadmap for the agency. The project gave rise to Impactful, an innovation agency that helps business clients balance commercial, social and environmental impact.

THE MAYOR OF LONDON

In February 2016, a team of Fellows were commissioned to boost the reach of the third round of the Mayor’s Civic Crowdfunding Programme, which gives London’s citizens an opportunity to shape the future of their city. The team led workshops around London and created a set of tools for Londoners to take on small-scale regeneration initiatives, like urban farms and street art projects.

ORBIT HOUSING

This project aimed to integrate social enterprises into housing associations’ supply chains, creating job opportunities for marginalised people and improving the environment. We brought together buyers and sellers at a co-design event and, resulting from this project, three Fellows launched Supply Change, a digital marketplace to help social enterprises win more work with the public sector.

YOUR CHANCE TO TRY YOUR HAND AT SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

We think that, done right, business can change the world. On Year Here, you’ll pick up the tools of business to bring down the system of inequality – and join The Activists in Suits. We want you to solve problems that matter rather than creating yet more apps that makes middle class lives marginally more convenient or falling for the social change big talk of the tech titans.

The final phase of Year Here is the Venture Lab, where Fellows work in small teams over eight weeks to come up with a new social enterprise idea and prototype it with real users.

The sessions focus on a different topics that support the development of your social venture such as prototyping, financial modelling and branding. These theoretical and practical sessions are led by partner organisations including Assembly, the EY Foundation and DLA Piper.

We’ll also have weekly crits with established social entrepreneurs, like Frontline’s founder Josh Macalister and Brenton Caffin, founder of The Australian Centre for Social Innovation. These are designed to help you refine your idea quickly through regular feedback.

We’ve established a great track record of launching social ventures that tackle society’s challenges in creative and entrepreneurial ways – and we’re hungry to set even more in motion.

WE WANT YOU TO GO ON TO SHAPE SOCIETY – AS BOLD AND ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERS

In a year’s time, we expect you to be running your own social enterprise, working for another fast growing social start-up or developing a portfolio career.

Year Here isn’t just about the time that you’re on the programme. It’s about building a much bigger and longer-term movement for change in Britain.

To enable this to happen, we’ll make introductions to some of the most interesting social enterprises in the country, who are hungry for talent, and let you know about top social innovation jobs, often shared exclusively with our alumni.

Our alumni remain central members of the Year Here family, acting as buddies for new Fellows and sharing their stories as part of future programmes. You’ll also join us at events throughout the year – like Off the Record, GradFest and Crowdbacker.

97% of our Fellows find paid employment within three months of graduating from Year Here. Twelve months after the programme, 34% of our alumni are leading their own social business while 34% work for another social start-up. The remainder of our alumni work in government, innovation, frontline delivery or private sector roles.

Meet a few of our alumni below.

SOPHIE SLATER

Sophie worked with grassroots women’s charities during her time at Year Here in 2014 and saw how cuts were posing an existential crisis to the charities that supported them. In response, she co-founded Birdsong, a fashion brand that connects women from worker to wearer.

She has written and lectured in sustainability for publications including Vice, i-D, Vogue, Refinery29, The Guardian and institutions such as Goldsmiths and London College of Fashion. Sophie served as a jury member for the D&AD awards and was recognised in Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in 2019.

@sophieavalon

MURSAL HEDAYAT

Mursal Hedayat is the founder of Chatterbox, a platform that trains refugees as foreign language tutors and connects them with learners around the world.

She is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur, recognised in the Forbes 30 under 30, Natwest WISE100, and Ashoka Emerging Innovators lists.

A former refugee to the UK from Afghanistan herself, Mursal was inspired to create pathways into professional careers for refugees after observing first-hand the vast untapped talent in the community.

@mursalhedayat

JOSH BABARINDE

Josh is the CEO of Cracked It, a smartphone repair business that gives young people an entrepreneurial route away from gang crime. Cracked It is winner of two Social Enterprise of the Year awards (Centre for Social Justice, 2018 and Evening Standard, 2019) and Josh was recognised on Forbes’ 30 under 30 list.

After the Brexit vote, Josh’s call for an independent office to monitor political campaigns was backed by over 160,000 and he became a founding convenor of More United. He is also a trustee of the Shackleton Foundation and The Funding Network.

@joshbabarinde

XENIA MOSELEY

The Independent named Xenia one of the UK’s five freshest talents for socially useful design. She currently works for Blackhorse Workshop CIC as their creative programme manager.

During the 2014 programme, she founded Curiosity Club, an enterprise that challenges disengaged school students to discover their abilities by exploring their curiosity. Xenia has produced work for Roman Krznaric’s Empathy Museum, the Department Store for the Mind and Terence Conran – and has been exhibited in the V&A as part of the London Design Festival.

@xeniamo

SAM BOYD

Sam joined the Fellowship in 2015. During his time on the programme Sam worked at the YMCA North London, and during his consulting project, he helped food-industry incubator Kitchenette develop a social offering, which became street food social enterprise Kitchenette Karts.

Sam is now Director of Impact and External Affairs at Switchback, an award-winning small charity supporting young Londoners to build stable lives after prison, where he has established and grown the charity’s policy and influencing activity from the ground up.

@samboyd1

SNEH JANI PATEL

Former Management Consultant Sneh is the co-founder of Bread and Roses, a social enterprise florist tackling the social and financial isolation experienced by many refugee and asylum-seeking women – featured in The Guardian, Financial Times, The Independent, Time Out and Stylist among others.

Sneh is also a consultant with FutureGov and is a member of social innovation collective, The Point People.

@SnehJaniPatel

A PLATFORM TO LAUNCH A SOCIAL VENTURE WITH BIG POTENTIAL

It’s not for everyone, but we think entrepreneurship gives you an opportunity to act nimbly without the constraints that come with working within large institutions.

Starting your own business is scary and seriously hard work. But, if you have a crack at it, we think you’ll develop a sense of possibility that will change your life – and could change the world around you.

Building a venture that has national impact takes serious commitment and perseverance so our support doesn’t stop when you graduate from the programme. We aim to give those that are in it for the long haul the best support possible to turn their ideas into reality.

At the end of the programme, Fellows will be invited to pitch to join our Incubator and venture network in exchange for a small stake in their businesses. We take on social enterprise ideas that have been prototyped in our Venture Lab, have a viable business model and real potential for scale.

The Incubator kicks off with Crowdbacker, our live crowdfunding event run in partnership with The Funding Network and RBS. Amounts raised are variable – from £2,500 to £8,000 per venture in the past year. And it’s not only money: you’ll have a chance to pitch for pro bono support to help you with legal and operational challenges.

Ventures also benefit from 8 weeks’ free desk space in our central London studio, business support from partners like the Boston Consulting Group and introductions to further investors, funders and clients. Past ventures have gone on to later-stage accelerators and incubators like BGV and Beyond Business.

Those that are accepted onto our incubator will also join our venture network, which includes award-winning social businesses like Birdsong, Migrateful and Chatterbox. On an ongoing basis, our alumni entrepreneurs benefit from introductions to relevant clients and investors, online resources to get started in business and marketing support to promote their services.

A year to test and build solutions to some of society's toughest problems.

OVERVIEW