City Drive is back — now rebranded Social Enterprise Drive 21, packed with events, fully online
18th March 2021
With 21 online events over five days from 19th-23rd April, Social Enterprise Drive 2021 (the rebranded City Drive) is back for its eighth year, celebrating social enterprise in Birmingham and beyond.
While tirelessly organised as ever by the team at iSE, Social Enterprise Drive couldn’t happen without the support of its sponsors, the support of the social enterprises that offer to deliver events — and the support of you, the people who come along every year to participate in a sector celebration that to the best of my knowledge has no real counterpart anywhere else in the country.
Social Enterprise Drive is truly a collaboration — by the sector, for the sector, with the sector — and that it has become a fixture in the social enterprise ‘season’ that not even COVID has been able to halt speaks volumes about the determination iSE brings to this. It is appropriate, then, that the flagship event of the week is ‘Stronger Together’ on Thursday 22nd April (09.10am-3.30pm), a social enterprise conference about the power of collaborating for growth.
As Sarah Crawley notes with some sadness in her introduction to the programme, this will be the last Social Enterprise Drive she curates, as she is soon to step down as chief exec of iSE. Personally, I don’t quite believe her: I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that she has a hand — somehow — in Social Enterprise Drive 2022. Think of it — a Social Enterprise Drive that coincides with the opening of the Common Wealth Games? I think she might find that challenge too hard too ignore…
Well done to everyone who has made Social Enterprise 2021 happen.
