Enterprise North West facilitated their first networking event as part of the Atlantic Social Lab project in Belfast during September 2018.

This networking event allowed for a group of local North West social enterprises and social entrepreneurs to consider and debate action for social change with a wide range of social change actors from across Northern Ireland and the UK, as part of the Development Trust NI’s Annual Conference. Attendees of Atlantic Social Lab project networked and partook in the plenary sessions in reflecting on emerging thinking and practice that is driving local economic development across the UK and present recommendations on what needs to be done to drive change in NI. The event and plenary sessions also celebrated the role of community development activists and how, as social change agents, they facilitate the empowerment of citizens to shape the spaces they live in, challenge the status quo and speak truth to power.

The attendance and involvement of local stakeholders (social enterprises, social entrepreneurs, community and voluntary groups and local council) from the North West of NI has significant value for social change within the North West as these attendees were able to network and share their ideas and discuss projects at a strategic level with some of NI’s most influential social change influencers. It also provided attendees with insights into other projects from across the UK that have affected social change at a local and regional level through increased community engagement, empowerment and participation. These attendees will now be able to follow up on these contacts and transfer this learning into their own projects at a local level. The main conclusions and results from the attendance at the conference of the ASL stakeholders were that they were all provided with a unique convergence of knowledge sharing, networking and learning into a single package of like-minded people and organisations.