Social entrepreneurship and experiential learning

Social entrepreneurship is a growing, but currently ill-defined area of innovation and business development. It is about accountability not just to commercial imperatives but to the wide range of stakeholders in a social enterprise, potentially an area of great tension. Social responsibility is about a commitment to society, entrepreneurship is usually understood to provide a business outlook on the enterprise – it needs to be sustainable commercially.

To educate the modern or millennial learner (born after about 1980 and grappling with burgeoning youth needs for creative employment development) into developing a small to medium enterprise with a social responsibility, modern postgraduate coursework programs have looked closely at experiential learning. This provides a performative learning through transforming theory into applied situations. The workplace based projects used for the postgraduate programs are effective immersive learning. This paper will include a case study of two postgraduate coursework units New Ventures in Creative Enterprise, and Building Creative Teams, part of a Masters in Communication/Creative Enterprise. These provide experiential learning about strategic planning for startup creative businesses, and work-based projects which build on interpersonal skills for ongoing success.

Social entrepreneurship and experiential learning

Social enterprises and entrepreneurship are about accountability not just to commercial imperatives but to the wide range of stakeholders in a social enterprise, potentially an area of great tension. Social responsibility is about a commitment to society or community, entrepreneurship is usually understood to provide a business outlook on the enterprise - it needs to be sustainable commercially and balanced carefully.
To educate the modem or millenniallearner (born after about 19t1O and grappling with burgeoning youth needs for creative employment developmem) into developing a small to medium enterprise with a social responsibility, modem postgraduate coursework programs have looked closely at experiential learning. This provides a transformative learning through workplace-based projects and strategic business conceptuaUsing. This paper will include a case study of two postgraduate coursework units New Ventures in Creative Enterprise, and Building Creative Teams, part of a Masters in Communication/Creative Enterprise. These provide experiential learning about strategic planning for startup creative businesses, and work-based projects which build on interpersonal skills for ongoing success.

NGOs, enterprise and rural development

Non-Government Welfare Organisations (NGOs) in rural areas have traditionally relied upon the state for a large part of their revenue which in turn provides the state with the capacity to impose strict monitoring and evaluation. However the tightening of state funding has either forced NGOs to stretch their own resource to the limit or to become more enterprising and innovative in their desire to provide people with access to an ever increasing range of community-based services and opportunities for connection with their local communities. The term that is often used for these new approaches is ‘social enterprise’ that has been defined as a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners’ . It is most often seen as an interface between public and private sector, being part of neither but engaging closely with both through partnerships, stakeholding and joint ventures as well as through complex trading and contracting relationships.

Such broad definitions however do not give much guidance to how particular NGOs can shift to a social enterprise model and still remain within their chosen missions. It is the very processes of re-imagining and reforming their enterprise that is a vital element in moving to a successful social enterprise practice. Accordingly this project focuses on two NGOs in different parts of the world (Brophy Family and Youth Services in Warrnambool. Australia and Aberdeen Foyer in Aberdeen, Scotland) that have developed (and are developing) new ways of approaching their roles as service providers and early intervention agents for youth in their local areas. Since both organisations have faced (and are facing) issues associated with depleting state allocated resources they are attempting to break new ground in the ways in which they redevelop their work with youth. Both agencies are leading the way in developing a broader approach that draws together disparate element of a social enterprise model. The project analyses the processes used by these two agencies to develop as social enterprises and how likeminded agencies can use the model for capability enhancement.

New community governance in small rural towns: the Australian experience

State and federal governments in Australia have developed a range of policy instruments for rural areas in Australia that are infused with a new sense of ‘community’, employing leading concepts like social capital, social enterprise, community development, partnerships and community building. This has encouraged local people and organisations to play a greater role in the provision of their local services and has led to the development of a variety of ‘community’ organisations aimed at stemming social and economic decline. In Victoria, local decision-making, before municipal amalgamations, gave small towns some sense of autonomy and some discretion over their affairs. However, following municipal amalgamations these small towns lost many of the resources—legal, financial, political, informational and organisational—associated with their former municipal status. This left a vacuum in these communities and the outcome was the emergence of local development groups. Some of these groups are new but many of them are organisations that have been reconstituted as groups with a broader community focus. The outcomes have varied from place to place but overall there has been a significant shift in governance processes at community level. This paper looks at the processes of ‘community governance’ and how it applies in a number of case studies in Victoria.

Food, passion and marginalised young people : technologies of the self in Jamie's kitchen

A passion for food that is understood in certain ways – slow, organic, not industrialised – plays a central role in the drama of the successful and popular Jamie’s Kitchen (2002) and Jamie’s Kitchen Australia (2006). Large parts of the drama in these shows revolve around an apparent lack of passion that is displayed by the marginalised, unemployed young people that are the central characters in this story. In this paper I examine the ways in which these accounts of food, passion, and the training of marginalised young people expose some of the challenges and opportunities faced by marginalised young people as they seek to transition into the uncertain and risky labour markets of 21st century capitalism. I argue that Michel Foucault’s (1988) concept of technologies of the self enables us to understand passion, and its particular manifestations in Jamie’s Kitchen, and in the training of marginalised young people, as a powerful technology of self transformation. The drama of Jamie’s Kitchen suggests that as a technology of the self passion for food promises to provide precarious, possibly temporary, forms of salvation, meaning and purpose for the young people engaged in the Fifteen Foundation’s social enterprise transitional labour market program.

Food and passion: technologies of self transformation in Jamie’s kitchen

Since the 1990s there has been a surge of televisual dramatisations of real-life cooking shows in industrialised countries (Versteegan 2010: 447). Through reality television cooking shows such as, MasterChef, Jamie 's Kitchen, Hell's Kitchen, viewers have encountered celebrity chefs, 'foodies', hospitality trainees, contestants, cooking competitions and customers. These shows have been understood as an indication of- and intervention into - contemporary consumption trends and as vehicles for social change. Many reality-based cooking shows have been regarded as educational, pedagogical sites that 'encourage populations to undertake surveillance of their own and others' bodies' and eating habits with messages like: 'You are what you eat!' or 'Organic is better' (Rich 2011: 3; see also Lewis 2007 and Chapter 4 in this book by Szkupinski-Quiroga, Sandlin and Redmon Wright).In this chapter we explore the reality television programme Jamie's Kitchen as a pedagogical site which seeks to transform young people's understandings about food, work and ultimately themselves. In 2002 the high-profile celebrity chef Jamie Oliver set out to transform a group of unemployed young Londoners into the enterprising, ideal workers of twenty-first century, :flexible capitalism.1 This process of transformation was represented in the enormously successful Channel 4 TV series Jamie's Kitchen.2 In Australia, we viewed the series, as it was screened on Channel 10 over five weeks during July and August 2003.

Building capacity in an indigenous nonprofit artistic enterprise

Growth in Indigenous artistic enterprises has attracted government funding, cultural tourists, and arts managers with a strong interest in cultural democracy and, more recently, an interest in business models for these artists. This paper documents a case study of Arilla Paper, an artistic enterprise in Queensland, Australia, where a group of Aboriginal women, worked on making paper from natural materials, to create a sustainable non-profit arts business. Sections of the business manual developed for these women, together with primary and secondary data supporting the Indigenous creative industries, are presented. The paper concludes that success in such ventures requires a social entrepreneurship model of funding that recognises the challenges of Indigenous cultural ownership and capacity building in business practice.

Is the social agenda driving sustainable property development in Melbourne, Australia?

Purpose – Sustainable property development has increased in market share over the past two to three years globally and locally. This research aims to analyze the drivers and barriers to sustainable property development in Melbourne using the triple bottom line (TBL) theoretical framework. The TBL posits that sustainability has social, economic and environmental aspects to fulfil.

Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was sent out to 190 developers in Melbourne who promoted sustainable property development to ascertain their views about the drivers and barriers.

Findings – This research indicates that in the 2007 Melbourne market the drivers were social rather than economic. The data reveal that social reasons are considered more than economic arguments for incorporating sustainability into developments. The business case, or the economic drivers for sustainability alone do not convince developers.

Research limitations/implications – The questionnaire survey informed us about developers' views but not why they have these views. The sample was limited to Melbourne.

Practical implications – More developments are required for developers to become convinced of the benefits. The relatively low price of energy undermines the business case for sustainability in property here and needs to be fully costed.

Originality/value – This paper illustrates that whilst the theoretical framework cites three key areas for sustainability, the reality is that developers are currently driven by social and environmental factors primarily and the business case is not accepted by the majority of developers.