Enterprise Soapbox update.
We’re very excited to share a new partnership agreement to deliver our Enterprise Soapbox workshops across all regions of the UK and all age groups – The Inspirational Learning Group! TILG have been going as a school Enterprise Workshop delivery company nearly as long as Innovative Enterprise and we’ve known one of the founders, Ben Dyer ,for around 15 years so we know Soapbox is in good hands.
A Bit of History:
Many of you will know that since 2007 we have been supplying Enterprise Soapbox (ESB) as an enterprise kit and as a workshop – in fact, of the 165,000 + people who Innovative Enterprise have worked with, we reckon about 90,000 of those are Enterprise Soapboxers!
The workshops were never a distinct plan when we designed Enterprise Soapbox as a kit – in fact the kits were designed to be sold when we were NOT delivering workshops! However, serendipity had other ideas and in the summer of 2008, after about 30 clients had bought ESB kits, we took a call from a girls’ school in Kent who had bought kits and refills for a drop-down day in July with their 200 Year 10s…could we help and go and deliver for them? Well, as the Richard Branson quote goes “when someone offers you an amazing opportunity, say YES and then work out how to do it…” which is exactly what happened.
So we bought plastic storage boxes, assembled factories with plastic jugs and spatulas, got 5 microwaves together, some tubs of soap, cellophane and loads of packaging materials, we planned the day and off we went. It was messy but fun and the students and staff loved it.
That summer we wrote the workshop plans, designed packs of business plans and inspiration as well as STEM links and career outlines and put it on the website…and sent out some newsletters and emails and from that time on, never looked back.
We delivered over 1,000 workshops in hundreds of schools – some for 12+ years running – and trained over 50 different young (and some not-so-young) people to deliver with us in all settings, mainstream schools, independent schools, special schools, universities, FE colleges, businesses and charities – each session slightly different and tailored to the needs of the group…it’s often said we’ve delivered Soapbox to all sorts of people in all sorts of settings – from a 4 year-old to an 82 year-old blind lady and every type of person in between!
So what’s happening now?
This year has marked a turning point in our businesses and lives – my wife Val and I have moved to France and as a result, we needed to make some changes to many things, not least the need to deliver workshops that need a car-full of equipment and resources, microwaves and buckets of soap base! So we took some time to re-evaluate our lives and what we wanted to do from now on – Val retired from providing School Counselling support after 30 years’ experience and I’ve decided to make some changes about what I want to provide.
Don’t despair though SoapFans – We’re delighted to share that we’ve signed a partnership with The Inspirational Learning Group because we know they will continue to deliver with professionalism, develop the workshops and variations on the theme and bring even more innovation to the skills and abilities your students will explore.
TILG themselves have a proud heritage in schools across the UK and experience of delivering excellent enterprise and business workshops so they were an obvious choice to secure the legacy of Enterprise Soapbox for us here at IE and for your students…they’ve created and managed the National Enterprise Challenge (now The National Careers Challenge) for more than a decade and have a huge presence snd profile in the enterprise, business and careers delivery space in the UK.
For future bookings please contact us as previously and we can forward your requests to TILG or please contact their support and bookings team at info@tilg.co.uk.