Next Practice

The Next Practice programme is Innovation Exchange’s most intensive form of innovation brokerage, providing bespoke support to innovators to strengthen both their innovation and the alliance of supporters around it. The programme helps innovators to focus inwards, to develop their ideas, their practice and their work.

It also supports innovators to look outwards and connect to service users, funders and other partners to ensure the innovation’s long-term success. Read more in the Next Practice booklet, Growing Innovation from the Third Sector. The Next Practice programme was launched in November 2008 and will run to March 2010. Innovators in the programme are working on innovations in the areas of support for excluded young people and independent living and range from start-up social enterprises to household name charities. In some cases, innovators are working to prove that a great idea can work in practice. In other cases, organisations are taking an innovation that has succeeded in one place and are looking to grow it or to extend it in new areas.

Innovation Exchange supports Next Practice programme participants with the offering of a little money and a lot of help. The programme has benefited from NESTA sponsorship, which enabled the Exchange to provide £225k of funding across fifteen projects. In addition to direct grants, the programme offers a mixture of coaching and consultancy support to each project. Innovation Exchange recognises that challenge and support is crucial for innovation, but we also know it can be hard for organisations to prioritise this within an organisation’s own budget. Learn about recent support activities.

The 15 Next Practice Projects:

Enabled by Design - building an online community to crowdsource the development of assistive technology
Slivers of Time - using the web to enable individuals to contract directly with one another to provide social care services
East London Food Access - delivering fresh fruit and vegetables to estates with no other access to fresh food
Brandon Trust and Symbol Family Support Services - using assistive technology to enable parents with learning difficulties to be safe, loving parents
Speaking Up - harnessing the power of co-production and peer-support to provide a sustainable brokerage service to personal budget holders
Clean Slate Training - providing work opportunities for people who can be excluded from the labour market
TimeBank - providing mentoring to young men recovering from mental illness
Horsesmouth - using the web to connect people seeking support and guidance with other people willing to provide it freely based on their own experiences
Dance United - using dance-based alternative education to build the self-confidence and self-discipline of young offenders
Creative North - developing mobile phone games to engage young people and help them to learn life skills
The Prince’s Trust - turning mentoring for young offenders from sporadic provision to a universal service across the country
BeatBullying - training young people as peer supporters to help tackle bullying in schools
Aquila Way - bringing together private landlords and trained volutneers to help vulnerable people to access and retain rented homes
ESSA and Phoenix Education Trust - working with NEET young people to support youth leadership and build young people’s confidence
Riverside Credit Union - working in Speke, near Liverpool, to develop a pre-paid card allowing credit union account holders to use ATMs and shop online

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