Imagine you are a creative freelancer at the start of lockdown. You have been building your business over the past few years and you know how to meet new market demands, but the dance studios, art galleries and community centres are now entirely closed.
Allia has kick-started a Climate in Focus campaign that will span activities within its Future Business Centres and the programmes that its venture support team deliver in 2022, in order to raise the urgency of the climate crisis and support those who have innovative solutions to address it.
Like a bright sunrise in January, the Climate Accelerator launch day lit Allia’s hopes for a great year ahead. Last week, the conference room at the British Antarctic Survey was filled with greetings as the Climate Accelerator cohort members gathered to pitch their ideas to each other, sharing their plans for a greener future.
Allia works with Cambridge City Council and Cambridgeshire Chambers of Commerce to manage grant funding to local businesses.
Businesses in Cambridge can apply now for up to £10,000 grants to help reduce their energy consumption, save money and improve their productivity.
As we observe in Dragons Den, the process of pitching a business idea before a panel of judges is daunting, to say the least. A stage sweat, worsened by the overhead lights, and the loud sound of expectation and applause are enough to send most people home.
The impact field is often regarded as difficult to quantify, qualify, and monetise. Yet as more social enterprises and other purpose-driven businesses continue to emerge and shine, the fact of impact’s real success is becoming impossible to ignore. There may be specific learnings that corporate leaders can glean from the experiences of founders in the impact space.
New Climate Accelerator will start in Cambridge in January 2022, working with start-ups who have innovative solutions for addressing the climate emergency
Allia is the first UK partner of EIT Climate-KIC to run a 6-month intensive Accelerator offering climate tech founders the opportunity to develop their start-ups and tackle the critical mission of the climate crisis.
When did you join Allia?
June 2019, almost 2.5 years ago
Has your role changed since you started here – and in what way?
I started as an Assistant Facilities Manager and was promoted to Facilities Manager within my first year.
The last 18 months have caused a new kind of anxiety for small business and start-up founders. One of the key things we’ve been hearing about is a lack of engagement outside their founder ‘bubbles’. People haven’t been networking; they haven’t been chatting over coffee or meeting at the water cooler and thus have missed the opportunity to meet new contacts.
We’re busy at Allia Future Business Centres with lots of recruitment for our business support programmes across all locations!
Our free business support programmes started running in 2013 and are now delivered across East London, Peterborough and Cambridge. Our programmes are designed to help entrepreneurs get their ideas off the ground, help small businesses and start-ups to grow and scale, and help ventures to create positive impact in social and environmental innovation.
