History of BDRC.pdf - Birmingham Disability Resource Centre

136The type of things that fitted into BusinessServices of course were not necessarilynew areas of work within BDRC or thewider disability movement, such asdisability equality training, access auditing,disability consultancy, arranging accessibleevents, etc., but the idea of formalising anddelivering them in a more strategic andcommercially astute way was a significantdevelopment for BDRC, it also built on thesocial enterprise related ambitions of theorganisation.If there had been any sense of trepidationor uncertainty in the past about, firstly,whether to and secondly, how to develop abusiness model from the foundations of acommunity and rights based ideologicalagenda, BDRC was now making a clearstatement of intent for the future. Louiserecounts the development of thedepartment:“There was a small element ofbusiness activity taking place, whichsat in the Employment and TrainingDivision at that time. Two staffmembers worked in that division onthe Disability Equality Trainingcontract which BDRC still holds todayto train taxi drivers in Birmingham.“But that was really the only contractthat BDRC held at that time and itbecame evident that we did get theodd enquiry from other organisationsaround Disability Equality Training andwhether we could put other relatedtypes of training on. It seemed a goodidea to explore that opportunityfurther.“Beyond that, BDRC has always hiredout its rooms. Organisations havebeen able to hire our facilities formeetings or conferences and what wehave here is pretty accessiblecompared to most in Birmingham, sothere was obviously a market aroundthat.“I looked into this in more detail andthought it would be quite nice to pulltogether a new section which lookedvery much at developing BDRCbusiness really.“We pulled together that taxi trainingcontract, the rooms that we hired, thetenants that were based here andlooked at expanding that further,particularly opportunities for trainingin Disability and Equality or trainingon the Disability Discrimination Act,doing access audits for example andother consultancy work.“I put a plan together and presented itto the Board of Directors here andthey certainly wanted to see ithappen. The plan was in line withwhat they wanted to do, so they said‘if you want to do that then go awayand get the funding for this tohappen’.“So I worked on an application to theBig Lottery Fund and I was successfulin securing three years funding tocreate a Business DevelopmentManager post and an assistant postand, because we already had thedisability and equality taxi training