We’re rapidly approaching the 50th Greenbelt Festival. Not one to miss! Here at CMS House we’re working on the final arrangements to offer an amazing programme this year. We’re there for the entire weekend morning to evening in The Exchange venue, along with Goodmakers Society, and the HeartEdge network.
We’ve got three fantastic sessions planned. We’ll be kicking off on Friday afternoon with Tech for Good, a session to hear stories about tech has been used to facilitate social and spiritual growth. This will be hosted by me, Sarah Clarke (CMS pioneer undergraduate programme leader), with Ash and Anj Barker, Jonny Baker and Madeline Linnell. There will be lots of opportunities to bring your questions and share your own stories, and we’ll be launching a hackathon from this session, as well as launching an app to help with creative thinking. If you’ve never heard of a hackathon, then this is the session for you!
Our second session, on Saturday afternoon, is called Risky (Social) Business, where you’ll have the opportunity to hear from entrepreneur extraordinaire Steve Baker (former Greenbelt board chair and serial social entrepreneur), Living Wage Award winner (2022) Antoinette Daniel and MA pioneer student and businesswoman Rosie Hopley with Claire Dormand (Lovewell founders). You’ll get the chance to find out how they started their businesses, as well as how they’ve navigated risk to deliver on social value and commercial viability.
Our last scheduled session, on Sunday lunchtime, is an Innovation Surgery. This has been designed to be a more interactive session where you can bring your ideas that could change your community, church (or the world!). Or if you’re struggling to get to the next level or have a particular problem this is a great opportunity to meet with experienced practitioners and gain valuable advice on what to do next. This requires signing up in the venue in advance of the session.
On top of this we have a Saturday night pioneer network social (beers will be provided) at The Exchange. All are free to attend, bring your friends this a great chance to let your hair down and discuss the day’s activities and meet like-minded pioneers.
As you might have gathered, The Exchange venue is focused on social/missional entrepreneurship, through which we’re really hoping to encourage and equip people to become more resourceful, especially given that funding and money is becoming more scarce for pioneers.
Ultimately we’re just hoping for good weather and a chance to connect with old friends and make some new ones. Do come and find us and say hi at The Exchange.
If you want to keep up with daily informal pioneer gatherings we will be posting a daily schedule on our CMS Pioneer Facebook group.
In addition this year we’re excited to announce that there will be an e-zine from our time at Greenbelt full of resources, session notes, and useful contacts. You can sign up in advance for your copy now.